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Authors: Elizabeth Essex

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General

BOOK: A Sense of Sin
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She released the offensive missive and clasped her hands together tightly to stop them from trembling. She had no more than a moment or two to compose herself before the opening set was to begin.
Blackmail. The letter, dated only one day ago, was clear and precise, straight to the point.
Celia Burke, we know what you did in Bath with Emily Delacorte. What we know, if we were to share it, would ruin you. We will tell all if you do not deliver the sum of three hundred pounds within a fortnight. We will contact you then. We will be watching you, Celia Burke.
They could be watching her now.
Her heart began hammering against her chest like a violent, mistimed clock as she glanced around quickly. So many faces. So many strangers. She could feel a pain, like hot acid etching its way through her chest, closing off her breath and choking the air from her lungs.
Paranoia. That’s what her friend Lizzie Marlowe would have called it. A false judgment based on current, unsettling events. Lizzie knew all sorts of big, impressive words, though she had never been sent away to school like Celia. Lizzie had felt paranoid when she first moved to Glass Cottage with all its strange goings-on. But Lizzie, the one person in whom Celia could have confided, the one person Celia would have trusted to help, was gone off with her new husband, taking all her forthright advice and decisive thinking with her.
“Celia, dear, you must smile. Young men need to be encouraged! We cannot disappoint your aunt and uncle Widcombe by appearing unhappy with the company. You look lovely. Let me see you smile.” Lady Caroline’s voice was growing insistent but not yet impatient.
Celia caught sight of her ashen reflection in a mirror and pressed her palms up to warm her pale cheeks.
It did no good. Her hands had gone cold.
How on earth had this happened to her, of all people? She was innocuous Celia Burke, not some exciting, wild creature who invited censure. She had always lived a life of quiet, orderly compliance and good sense that even her own mother despaired of marrying her off, despite her supposed beauty.
Poor mama. Celia had tried her very best not to disappoint and upset her mother’s plans for a grand match, but they were quite untenable. Despite her supposed beauty, and despite Lizzie having given her the nickname by which she was now known throughout all of Dartmouth, Celia was never going to be a diamond of the first water. Or even the second. Not at all. Because her own beauty held no appeal for her.
She had learned to value other characteristics, in herself and in others: loyalty, companionship, and intelligence. Not things she had found in great abundance amongst Dartmouth society’s young lordlings. The sort of young men her mother and aunts invariably favored seemed to care only for pretty appearances, or for horses with pretty appearances. Such men would make terrible husbands, and she would make any and all of them a terrible wife.
Celia’s dream of perfect marital happiness was with a different sort of man. A man of action and determination, a man who earned his place in the world through his own daring and resourcefulness. But such men did not attend balls in Dartmouth, and even if they did, they were far beyond her awkward abilities.
She drew a long wistful breath at the thought.
“Celia!” Her mama’s voice grew sharp.
“Yes, Mama.” Celia turned away from the mirror and pinched her cheeks to flood color back into her face. But there was little hope for it. The evening was going to be awful. Her mother was a veritable terrier when it came to ferreting out a single untruth, let alone a whole letter of them.
Celia would be ruined one way or another.
Her mother was halfway to working herself into a fine glower over Celia’s lack of enthusiasm. Lady Caroline Burke did not like to have her plans thwarted by anyone, least of all her apparently scatterbrained eldest daughter.
But Celia was not scatterbrained. She was, as her father so kindly put it, everything sensible, but often preoccupied, and tonight she was entirely occupied with her imminent, total, and complete ruination.
Ruination was a word that encompassed rather a lot, but Celia knew exactly what it would mean to her. She would be repulsed by her family, rejected by society, and unable to make a marriage—any marriage. It would be the end of everything she wanted. She
had
to keep from being ruined—there was simply no alternative.
The Ravishing Miss Burke, they called her. The great local beauty. How disappointed the Marquess’s guests would be. She didn’t need to consult the mirror to know she was not in good looks. She looked tense and guarded. And no wonder. She
felt
tense and guarded, hollow and brittle from the effort of holding herself together. There was no one with whom she could share the letter. No one she could ask for help. No one who cared about the truth.
She was completely and utterly on her own.
C
HAPTER
2
C
elia pasted on a pleasant smile, turned back to the ballroom, and stood as still as possible for her mother’s inspection. Bains, Celia’s maid, had done her job well and Celia’s appearance, from her carefully, elaborately curled hair to her elegant gown, could not be faulted. Bains had chosen to dress her in a white silk gown, in the up-to-date style of a simple chemise dress. Lovely floral embroidery on the flounced neckline and sleeves in deep, vibrant silver, blues, and pinks complemented the Turkish blue satin sash at Celia’s waist and managed to make the most of her fair complexion and dark hair.
“There. I told you, you look lovely. Absolutely perfect.” Lady Caroline’s happiness was thus restored.
If only Celia could restore her own happiness and composure as easily. Where was she to obtain three hundred pounds, when she didn’t even have three?
“Celia, attend to me, please! I shouldn’t have to remind you how important this ball is. It is the only ball your aunt and uncle will hold at Widcombe Court all summer and it is imperative you show yourself well as the niece of the Marquess and Marchioness. There will be no dancing with vicars and the like this evening, do you understand? Your beauty and connections entitle you to higher ambition, my dear girl, if you would but throw off your awkwardness. You ought to have grown too old for this woeful shyness. You are beautiful. You dance well. All you have to do is hold your head up and smile. It is not too much to ask.”
“Yes, Mama.” It was not too much to
ask
, though it had always seemed too much to accomplish. For the hundredth time in the past month, Celia wished her friend Lizzie was there. Lizzie would know what to do. Lizzie always had.
But Lizzie was gone off with her new husband, Captain Marlowe, on his ship. She was undoubtedly giving the French no end of trouble, but could not help Celia one bit.
So Celia would have to learn to help herself. She would have to get through this night. She would have to hold her head up and dance with young lordlings, who saw her as nothing more than the architecture of her face. She would have to whisk herself out of the ballroom for a moment of peace and solace when her mother was otherwise occupied.
And, she would have to find the money somehow, somewhere, without anyone else being the wiser. She would have to get herself out of the hideous, tangled web of lies and deceit. She would have to cope.
Because it wasn’t only her reputation at stake, but Emily’s as well. Lady Emily Delacorte had been Celia’s friend and mainstay during the interminable year she had spent away from home at Miss Hadley’s school in Bath. Emily had made school bearable. Emily had made study fun and had convinced Celia she had more to offer than just her face. That she had talents and ambitions worth pursuing.
But Emily was dead. Celia had failed her when Emily had needed her most. And so Celia wasn’t going to fail her again. It was the very least she could do to serve Emily’s memory.
“And you will not dance with any of that Glass Cottage set.” Her mama was still instructing. “Now that Mrs. Marlowe has gone away, there is no call for you to be seen with those naval officers. They are an entirely too common lot.”
“No, Mama.” It had done no good to tell mama she had only a passing acquaintance with the officers who were still in residence at the Marlowe’s property. The only one she knew by name was Lieutenant McAlden, and she went out of her way to avoid him and his forceful, blunt ways.
“Your cousin, Ronald, is, I think, old enough to dance with you credibly. You may lead out the first dance with him.”
“Oh, no, Mama, please. Ronald is not yet fifteen.”
Anybody but Ronald.
Like any spoiled, gawky boy of his age, Ronald’s chief mode of communication was insult. And like any particularly obnoxious younger relation, he knew just what to say and what to do to embarrass his cousin Celia.
“He is your uncle’s heir. He will be the Marquess someday. You will dance with him.”
“Of course, Mama.” Celia spoke quietly with all the appearance of compliance. But she would not suffer Ronald without putting up some resistance. With her mama, most times the indirect approach was best. As Lizzie would say, the easiest way into the house is through a back door.
“I only hope he has grown taller since the last time I saw him. I would hate to tower over him so awkwardly and put him into one of his tempers. His short height did make me seem so
very
tall last time. Gentlemen do hate it when they appear so very short in comparison.”
“Do you know, now that you mention it, I don’t believe your aunt will allow him to dance yet. Fifteen is too young to be in company still, I find. We will look elsewhere for your first partner.”
Celia would certainly look elsewhere—to her uncle’s small, private book room off the library. Familiarity with the house was one of the blessings of relation and Celia knew the time spent among her uncle’s extensive collections of books would afford her the only real moments of peace and pleasure she was likely to have all evening.
The Marchioness of Widcombe, Aunt Margaret, came bearing down on Celia like a galleon under full sail. “Celia, darling, you look marvelous. You must come and meet some of my guests.”
Her aunt was nearly as ambitious for Celia as mama. Between the two of them, there would be no peace, but at least there would be less time to give herself over to anxiety. It was wholly disconcerting, the relentless fear. And wholly new. She had never had occasion in her life to be afraid before. Until now, there had been nothing in her life to be frightened of. She had never known want, poverty, or sickness. She had been loved and cosseted—indeed her mother’s maneuvering and chiding came from love, from wanting only to secure the best possible future for her daughter.
As a result, Celia had no skill, no experience with which to combat the constant roiling in her belly, the squeezing in her lungs.
“Stand up straight, Celia. And smile, dear,” her mama instructed. “Smile.”
“Yes, Mama,” Celia murmured again, all compliant obedience. But compliance and obedience had become an unsafe habit, dulling her ability to think and act for herself. It was a habit she could no longer afford.
Celia’s mother had taken her usual station at the top of the dance floor, much like a general surveying the field of battle, ready to make her strategic pronouncements about how Celia was to be best deployed. There was no chance of a reprieve. Lady Caroline Burke would not relent. As she so bluntly put it, Celia could no longer afford to indulge in a young girl’s awkwardness. Awkwardness simply would not do.
Celia knew all the rules. She must stand up straight and proud and show herself to best advantage. She must be sweet and accommodating to all, but only dance with the right people. She must say the right thing to each person she met, but know to whom she must speak. Her head ached with the wealth of contradictions. People, and their rules and games never made any sense.
If she were very lucky, her mama would be feeling extremely picky about the quality and quantity of the evening’s eligible gentlemen—not that there was a superfluity of the species in Dartmouth—and she wouldn’t have to dance above once in four sets.
The possibility of having to dance with a stranger—with
the
stranger—whoever was blackmailing her, struck her. He could be right there in her aunt’s ballroom. Celia glanced around the room, trying to act circumspectly, at the same time taking measure, trying to identify who might be the threatening stranger. She’d lived in Dartmouth all her life, but she felt as if she hardly knew the place.
Everyone seemed to be watching, and waiting, for something.
She felt frozen and stiff with fear. Only a few minutes into the ball and already her face felt as if it would crack in two.
At the touch on her arm Celia whirled and came face to chest with a rather large blue uniform—Lieutenant McAlden in all his looming, naval glory.
The Lieutenant was an extremely large man of rugged handsomeness and overwhelming masculine presence. He had, from the first moment of their acquaintance, intimidated her. Wearing his naval dress uniform, he was nothing short of unapproachably splendid. He bowed correctly, but very stiffly. “Miss Burke.”
He was ill at ease, she realized, with the polite formalities of the ball. She returned a curtsy. “Lieutenant. It is a pleasure to see you here this evening.” She spoke automatically, with polite, expected words. Then she realized she actually meant it. Despite the fact his cool, almost stern demeanor normally made her feel awkward and tongue-tied, she was warmed by the recognition that he was nearly as uncomfortable at the ball as she. It made him seem much more human. “You look quite resplendent in your uniform.”
“You are too kind. Will you do me the honor of the next dance?”
A small bolt of shock winced through her, but only a small shock. She supposed she had, in the course of the evening, begun to grow accustomed to the sensation. In this case the shock was the result of knowing the Lieutenant did not normally, under any circumstances, care for dancing. She was too curious at his behavior to think of refusing.
It certainly was a day for firsts.
Celia shot a glance at her mother, but decided she would chance it. “I would be honored, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Commander now, actually.” He indicated some distinguishing article of gold braid upon his uniform.
Normally, Celia liked nothing better than a defining characteristic, some particular thing that helped her sort a person apart from the rest. But she had long ago classified McAlden as
homo periculus x territus
, a terrifyingly dangerous man, even before she knew anything of his distinguished naval service.
“As a result of our last, successful mission.” He was explaining his promotion. “The business out at Redlap Cove.”
“I congratulate you, Commander.”
“I thank you, Miss Burke.”
They took their places in the set, and spent a companionable time dancing without ever once being required to talk. As a consequence, for the first time all evening, Celia began to relax enough to almost enjoy herself.
But Commander McAlden was not. His fierce scowl had deepened.
“Commander McAlden, I fear you are not enjoying this.”
“Not at all Miss Burke,” he lied politely. “It is only . . . I am not a comfortable dancer.”
“Then you have already been kind enough by dancing with me this much. I beg you would let us retire from the field before we are completely routed by Roger de Coverly.”
Relief cleared his face. “You are too kind.”
“You must not think so,” Celia demurred. She had her own selfish reasons to leave the floor: escaping the regard of her mama and whoever else might be watching and looking at her with antagonism. She clasped her hands behind her back as they walked towards the terrace. The Commander would undoubtedly fare better out of doors. He was too big, even for a ballroom. “Perhaps it is only that I must save myself from being seen with a man who appears to be grimacing while he is dancing with me.” She smiled to show she meant it only in jest.
The Commander was immune to even her best smiles. “I apologize. I am not a comfortable dancer,” he repeated. “I don’t dance often enough to be at ease.”
“Pray don’t apologize. I know it was only out of kindness that you asked me to dance, so it is only fair that I return the favor and do you the small kindness of retiring in turn.”
“You
are
too kind,” he insisted, then shook his head, rather like a frustrated, angry bear. “This will not do. I must warn you. You’ll be eaten alive.”
She felt instantly frozen and numb, stunned by the instant return of her panic. The letter! What could he know of it? “I . . . I beg your pardon?”
“May I have your permission to speak plainly, Miss Burke?”
Her heart kicked up, hard and erratic inside her chest. She hardly knew what to expect. “Please do, Commander.”
“I must tell you”—he ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration and annoyance—“I fear the world may not be an entirely safe place, Miss Burke. Not even here. I would caution you to guard yourself.”
She stepped back from him abruptly. How on earth was Commander McAlden, one of the most single-mindedly steadfast men of her acquaintance, mixed up with the blackmail?
“What”—she swallowed—“do you know?” Her voice was nothing but a tremulous whisper.
He shook his head again, like a big, angry bear. “Honor prevents me from . . . I can . . . only say you must be careful.”
“Of whom?”
“Of unworthy men.” With that he bowed and abruptly walked away—leaving her in a world turned upside down.
Del advanced to the edge of the dance floor. His friends, Lieutenants James, Gardener, and Scott, ranged behind him like a pride of lions at the edge of the savannah, garnering all the attention. Even in a backwater like Dartmouth, his purposefully uncivilized reputation was well-known. People turned to look and speak behind their fans.
He had worn his scarlet Marine Forces uniform in defiance of custom, even though he was no longer a serving officer. The brilliant red of his coat, alongside the deep blues of the navy men, stood out like a beacon. His presence could not be missed. And so, when James began to talk of an adjournment to the library for a glass of Widcombe’s best brandy, he left them behind, and began to stalk her.

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