If He's Sinful (15 page)

“Damn me. Think they might be right?”

“That a woman who drags unwilling young women into her brothel and forces them to prostitute themselves might have committed murder?” He sighed when his friends grimaced at his sharp words. “Sorry. It is just that every time I turn a corner, I stumble into a problem and it prods my temper. I need no more. I may not believe that a ghost told Penelope anything, but I do not find it hard to believe that Mrs. Cratchitt would kill someone or hide a body.”

“And if she has murdered someone, or someone was murdered in the brothel, she could not safely toss the body in the river as so many others do,” said Cornell. “Too great a risk of being seen toting a body around through the streets on the way to the river. Not many talk around here but I would suspect that woman is not one the local populace much trusts or admires. She would know it, too, and find another way to be rid of a body.”

“So, bury it in the cellar,” murmured Whitney. “Best place. She serves wine. Must have a place where she stores it. That usually means some room under the ground because it stays most even in temperature.”

Ashton rolled his eyes. His friends were obviously keen on finding out if there really was a body in Mrs. Cratchitt’s cellar, if she even had a cellar. He should have known they would be. They used the brothels but they expected to be serviced by women who knew the game, not ones dragged unwillingly into it by some hard-eyed madam. The thought of some innocent, no matter what her class, dragged from ones who cared for her and thrown into that sad life had outraged them all. It would be as impossible to stop them in whatever they planned to do as it had been the boys. Ashton’s sojourn in London to find a rich wife grew more complicated every day.

The complications had begun the night he had seen Penelope tied to that bed, he thought as his friends discussed and discarded increasingly wild plans to get into the as yet undiscovered cellars of Mrs. Cratchitt’s bordello. Even his growing dissatisfaction with his anticipated marriage had hardened into a cold hard truth. From that moment on, he had lost control of his life. He had been tricked and threatened into a betrothal he did not want, now wondered if the money he needed was even Clarissa’s to give, Penelope drove him mad with an aching need he had never felt before, and a pack of boys kept distracting him with concerns for their safety. All of them acting as if seeing ghosts, foreseeing the future, and sensing lies were normal, and their firm belief in their supposed gifts was starting to weaken his firm resolve to be a man of reason. Toss in the facts that someone wanted to kill Penelope and his entire family hated his fiancée and he found himself lost in the midst of utter chaos.

It was time to take control of his life. His first step toward that goal was a good one. Investments. Ashton knew he needed to move on that as quickly as possible. He would also cease lurking about waiting for proof of the Hutton-Moores’ dishonesty to fall into his hands. It shamed him that young boys were doing more to find out the truth than he was. It was time to thoroughly investigate his fiancée and her sneering brother. It was also time to rid London of Mrs. Cratchitt. Even if she was not a murderer, she was a danger to all women.

“Find out whom she buys her wine from,” he said, breaking into his friends’ discussion.

“Ah, yes, follow the wine,” said Brant. “Excellent. Then what? We are not going to be able to get within a league of that place without one of her thick-necked brutes espying us.”

“No, but the boys can. Someone has to carry the wine into the place. If the boys know when it is coming, they can be there clamoring to help for a coin or two. We may even be able to turn the merchant to our side, allowing one of us to join his crew. In disguise, of course. The boys can certainly aid us in finding the merchant.”

“Agreed,” Cornell said.

One matter taken care of, Ashton thought with satisfaction. “I also want every scrap of information that can be gathered on the Hutton-Moores. My man obviously missed something and our methods thus far have not been serious enough, I believe. I will try to discover who was the solicitor Penelope’s father and mother used. Penelope can help there. If he is corrupt, then all claims by the Hutton-Moores are in doubt.”

“If they are, then the riches they claim may not be theirs. How could they think to continue such a fraud?”

“Having a viscount indebted to you certainly helps,” murmured Vincent.

“Exactly.” Ashton began to see how easily they could use him to hold tight to what was not theirs. “So will making sure that Penelope’s wealth stays in their hands. If they make me complicit in their fraud, that will be even easier. They would think that, if I discovered the truth, I would be anxious to save my own skin, if only from disgrace, and protect them.”

“But surely, if there is an inheritance, it will come to Penelope when she comes of age.”

“
If
she comes of age.”

“Strike me blind! This situation gets more knotted by the hour.”

“So let us put our minds to unraveling it.”

Chapter Nine

Penelope bit back a pithy curse as Doctor Pryne plucked the stitches out of her head. Some of her hair had been cut away from the wound, much to her dismay. She was not vain but she wanted to kill Mrs. Cratchitt for that alone.

Just thinking of that woman was enough to sour her mood. Nothing had gone right since that night. She was haunted by a ghost named Faith but had not yet been able to do anything to help the sad spirit find peace. The boys were running wild, and far too often, she did not even know where they were, although she had her suspicions. Charles and Clarissa were suddenly far too interested in where she was and what she was doing. A carriage had almost run her down. The worst of it all was that she was almost certain her infatuation with Radmoor had become something much deeper. Penelope had reluctantly faced the fact that she was in love with a man who would soon marry her stepsister, yet that had been but a shadow of what she felt for him now. She did not know whether to cry or to bang her head against the wall until her good sense returned.

For a fortnight Lord Ashton Pendellan Radmoor had invaded her home as often as he invaded her dreams. With each visit his embraces grew warmer, his kisses more demanding. Penelope knew what he wanted. She wanted it, too, much to her shame. Her weakness for the man troubled her so much she had begun to spend more time at her other house, recklessly putting herself under the watchful eyes of her stepsiblings. It was a madness she did not know how to cure. The way Ashton touched her, the way he kissed her, was pure sin and she ached to revel it.

He claimed he was temperate in all things, and she had often sensed his confusion, even his unease, with the passion that flared between them. Yet she could not see him thus. The way he kissed her, the way he could make her feel, and the way he had her aching to break every rule she had ever set for herself made him a sinful temptation in her eyes. And she was failing miserably in resisting that temptation.

“There, lass,” said Doctor Pryne. “As good as new.” He lightly slapped her hand away when she started to reach up to touch the healed wound. “Leave it be. ’Twill itch for a while and”—he patted her on the back—“your hair will grow back in soon enough.”

She thanked the doctor and offered to walk him out, but he jovially refused, warning her to stay out of trouble as he left. The moment the door shut behind him, she raced to the mirror. It took several arrangements of her hair before she was certain no one would see where it had been cut. Suddenly, Penelope laughed. She was vain, at least about her hair. It was only hair, and plain brown hair at that, she sternly reminded herself as she left her room and started down the stairs.

The front door slammed open and Penelope’s heart leapt into her throat. The ridiculously dressed small boy standing there was not immediately recognizable. “Hector?” Was that absurd costume what Clarissa thought a page should wear?

Hector sighed and stomped into the house, slamming the door behind him. He walked right past Penelope and into the parlor. A hundred questions pounded in Penelope’s head. She quickly followed him and watched him fling himself onto a settee. She was just about to sit down across from him when she saw the bruises on his face. She leapt to his side, ignoring all his attempts to push her away.

“Clarissa did this to you, did she not?” Penelope rose to go and collect cool water and some cloths. “Wait right here.”

Anger clawed at Penelope as she gathered what she needed to tend to Hector’s poor battered face. When she had first caught wind of the fact that Hector was acting as a page for Clarissa, she had been tempted to yank him back to the safety of the Warren. Then she had thought on how that would bruise his youthful pride, and how he was doing it to try and help her. Instead, she had enlisted the aid of Mrs. Potts to keep an eye on the boy. Now she wished she had given in to her first impulse. She hurried back to his side, cursing her stepsister all the way.

“Why do you think Lady Clarissa did this?” asked Hector as he held a cold cloth against one cheek while Penelope gently cleaned the scrapes on the other side.

“I know what you have been up to, how you have been playing the page for her and spying for me. You have lived here long enough to know that very little can be kept a secret for long.” She smoothed a salve over the scrape. “Any wounds aside from what you have on your face?”

He sighed. “She kicked me, too. In my ribs. I was careful, though. I protected my belly and my man parts just as Artemis taught me to.”

Penelope felt torn between the urge to laugh and the urge to cry. His man parts, indeed. Her anger returned in a rush, hotter than ever, when she stripped the boy to his waist and saw the bruises forming along his ribs.

“She kicked you more than once by the look of it. What happened?” she asked as she inspected the wounds, relieved to find that bruises were all he had suffered.

“I spilled tea on her gown.” He watched Penelope warily as he told her what happened. “She let out a screech loud enough to make your ears bleed and then she hit me. I fell and that was when I got the scrapes on the other side of my face. Then she stood up and kicked me, cursing at me like a sailor. Soon as she went stomping out of the room to go and change her gown, I left.” He frowned. “She has hit me before. And pinched me and the like. But never like this. I think something has gone very wrong for her and I think I know what. Radmoor.”

Although she was so furious she could hardly breathe, Penelope asked, “What has Radmoor done to put her into such a fury?”

“Nothing and that is the problem. He has not bowed to her or praised her eyes or brought her gifts.”

“And because a man has not written odes to her toes, she beats a boy in her care?”

Hector’s eyes widened at the fury in her voice. “She has a fierce temper and wants what she wants right when she wants it.”

“You are
not
going back there.”

“Nay. Decided that when I picked myself up off the floor.”

That stark image was enough to snap the last tether on her anger. Penelope ordered Hector not to step one small foot out of the house and then left to confront Clarissa. During the ride in the hack, she struggled to bring the wild fury surging through her body under some control but it was difficult. The rage over what Clarissa had done to Hector was fed and strengthened by her own many grievances against the woman, not the least of which was that Clarissa had a claim on Ashton.

From the day her mother and the old baron had died, Clarissa and Charles had treated her like some embarrassing secret, as if she lived on their meager charity and owed them the courtesy of not shaming them by showing her face in public. They had banished her to the attics in her own home, never even shared a meal with her, introduced her to no one, and took her nowhere. Clarissa had even taken her mother’s jewels, not one of which had been bought by the old baron.

Why have I endured it?
she asked herself as she paid the driver and walked to the door of her house. For this house? To find out what Charles and Clarissa were doing with her inheritance? At the moment none of her reasons for lingering at the house made any sense. She was sure she could have found some other way to protect what was rightfully hers, to expose the criminal venality of her stepfather’s spawn.

She found Clarissa in the parlor admiring herself in a small oval mirror. “Clarissa.”

Clarissa turned to stare at Penelope, clearly horrified by Penelope’s appearance. Penelope knew her gown was a drab, blue thing fit only for a maid to wear and that her hair was a tangled mess, but she did not think it was worthy of such shock. It also had to be a shock for Clarissa to find her stepsister in the room she had chosen to meet her many admirers, a room Penelope had been banned from. Penelope knew when Clarissa saw the anger in her eyes. The way Clarissa eyed her so warily told Penelope the woman was wondering if Penelope had decided it was time to rebel. If so, Clarissa was going to think it was time to push Charles to stop dawdling and just get rid of her unwanted stepsister.

Ashton stepped out of his carriage just in time to see Penelope enter Hutton-Moore House. By the front door. She never went into the house through the front door. Alarm quickened his steps. He pushed past the startled butler and hurried toward the ornately decorated parlor where Clarissa liked to hold court.

“What are
you
doing here? I am expecting Radmoor and he does not wish to see such a slattern. Get out.”