Lady of Sin (15 page)

She turned to him, her brow puckered with concern. “You inherited this property and your father has interfered with your receiving it? That astonishes me.”

“He did it as a punishment. He had plans for me that I did not accept, and I had plans that he did not like. Contesting my uncle’s will over this property was his way of persuading me his way was best. Even when I compromised, it was not enough.”

“What compromise did you offer?”

“I agreed that I would not become an actor.”

Her expression lightened. Delight glinted in her eyes. “Oh my, Nathaniel. Did you really intend such a thing?”

“I had it all planned. I attended university to appease him first, and even took my degree. After that, however, I intended to trod the boards. When I informed him, he almost suffered apoplexy.”

She giggled and pressed her hand to her mouth. “I am picturing it. What a delicious scandal that would have been. Norriston is so upright too. So very
important
in the government and society. It was kind of you to change your mind.”

“It was a great sacrifice. I felt very noble. I expected that whatever I chose to do after that to be welcomed, because anything was better than the theater. I was wrong, of course. Men like my father are not merely interested in avoiding the worst and achieving better. They want to ensure the best.”

She crinkled her nose in the most adorable way. “He does not like that you are a lawyer, you mean.”

“If I had become a barrister, and spent my years milking families of the value of their contested estates, he might have grudgingly approved. Common Pleas is tainted by trade, of course. And the Old Bailey . . .”

“Yes.” She moved on, and he fell in step. “When did you realize a courtroom was a stage, and you could still be an actor?”

She was very perceptive. Very smart. “The first time I performed, and saw my effect on the audience. I had been trained in rhetoric for the church. I argued that first case as if I were a preacher. Actors, preachers, lawyers—we all use spoken words to persuade. There I was, preaching, and I realized it might be more effective if I ceased using a pulpit and treated that court as a stage.”

She looked over at him as they passed back into the drawing room. “You would have been a magnificent actor or clergyman. I imagine your father wanted the latter role for you.”

“He still does. And this—” He gestured to the walls and ceiling and beyond. “This and much more waits for me if I agree.”

She sat on a chair. Her gaze followed the path his arm had made. “How much more?”

He took another chair, which was positioned where he could see her completely. “It keeps increasing, as we both age and time for it runs out. He wants a bishop in the family.”

She appeared very serious as she calculated and weighed the situation. “Is this property very large? Are there farms and rents attached?”

“It is more than respectable.”

“Have you fought Norriston in Chancery for it?”

“No. The matter just sits there, neither bleeding the estate nor progressing, as such things can for decades.”

“So you live at Albany, instead of a town house. You make your own way, instead of enjoying the fruits of your birth. It is a high price you pay for your pride and independence.”

“I do not make my own way entirely. Norriston is not that stubborn. There is a small allowance, and I also have a portion from my mother.”

She kept gazing around the chamber, at the walls and windows and moldings, taking measurements for her thoughts.

Finally she turned her attention to him.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I think you know why, Charlotte.”

She flushed slightly, but her thoughtful demeanor did not alter. “I speak of your original intention in arranging this visit. You offered marriage three days ago. If I had accepted, I would have come here as your bride. What did you intend to show me in bringing me to this house? That I had married a man who could not be bought? Or that I had married a man who could give me wealth if I wanted it?”

Oh, yes, she was smart. It would help sometimes if she were not. “I intended to explain my situation and hear your thoughts on it. Since you refused, that conversation became unnecessary, although we seem to be having it anyway.”

“When you marry, you will reconsider?”

“The responsibilities of a wife might require it, I suppose.”

“Responsibilities do that, don’t they? No wonder men like Dante and Lyndale were tempted to live their whole lives without any. I am curious, however. Is it the boy in you that resists your father and rebels at his command? As I said, you would make a magnificent clergyman, and I think you know it.”

He thought about his answer. He realized that it mattered to him what she thought of his decision. “It is not the rebellious boy, but the honest man, I hope. I do not belong in the church; this I know. If I am going to play a role, let it be clear that I am an actor on a stage.”

She accepted that with little reaction. She rose, and he did as well.

“I will retire and see how my maid is progressing with unpacking. Perhaps I will have that bath you spoke of.”

She walked to the door, but stopped. Once more she surveyed the chamber.

“I despise blackmail. It is a curse from which my family suffered most cruelly, and I loathe the people who engage in it. Norriston is doing something very similar. He is trying to extort something valuable from you. It is disgraceful for a father to do such a thing, although it is common enough.”

Her words seethed with a vehemence that surprised him. That which still divided them suddenly intruded. Finley, Mardenford, Harry—all of it had begun with a blackmail threat. He had not realized she had experienced its devastation before, but her anger and speech implied that she had.

“If I had accepted your proposal and come here as your bride, I would not have asked you to be a hypocrite for my sake, Nathaniel.” She opened the door. “Instead I might have urged you to tell Norriston to go to hell.”

She could not decide what to wear. The one dinner dress that she had packed, with its ivory silk and ecru lace and sloping décolleté from shoulder to breast, showed a lot of skin. She did not want him thinking she was luring him. There was nothing worse than a tease.

Unfortunately, the other dresses were not suitable for a country house. They had been brought on the assumption she would stay at inns. The ivory dress had only come on the chance some notable in some town invited her to a proper dinner, as indeed several had.

She eyed all the options, and knew it would have to be the dinner dress, skin and all. It would look odd, almost rude, to sit in that dining room in anything else. It would also prove what a coward she was.

Nancy set to dressing her hair. Charlotte kept insisting the style be made more sedate. Nancy wanted to do a bit of painting. Charlotte refused.

All the while her mind hopped from thought to thought, but her nervousness and indecision about Nathaniel flowed like a racing current beneath it all.

Mostly she considered what she had learned today. She had been indifferent to Norriston in the past. He was a presence one could not ignore in society, tall and imposing, a bit severe but temperate in demeanor. It was not hard to see him in Nathaniel, although Nathaniel was more amiable and quicker to smile.

Now she decided she did not like Norriston at all. It was not fair that he coerced his son by withholding this property, and whatever else was involved. While it was true that younger sons of peers often entered the church, and while it was also true that most of them had no business doing so if one examined their beliefs and constitutions, that did not mean that all younger sons should strike that bargain without thought.

She found it admirable that Nathaniel did not want to live a lie. If more men were that honest, the church might not be in the doldrums that begged for the winds of reform.

It was a lovely property that he sacrificed too. The house was not distinguished, but it was large and very comfortable. The land was beautiful. The entire setting evoked peace. It had to tempt him. One word, one shift in where he performed, and it would be his. And more, he said. Probably much more, if Norriston had been increasing the bribe for almost a decade.

Nancy finished with a final tweak of a curl, and fastened a simple necklace. Charlotte examined the results in the looking glass. She appeared elegant in an appropriately restrained way. There was nothing in the image she faced that would entrance a normal man, let alone Nathaniel Knightridge.

I have to know.

Well, he would have to survive not knowing. The last few hours had convinced her there was more to lose than win in any affair. Not only her memories of that night were at risk, but other, older ones, which had nothing to do with Nathaniel, also cringed on the edges of her heart.

Lyndale’s party had not threatened those memories in the least. The entire episode had been removed from her real life, both past and present. It had been an experience in a separate realm of existence.

That would not be true next time.

She had begun to doubt the old memories. The pictures had sharpened again, so her mind could examine them. She resisted doing so. She did not want any proof they were the forgeries that she feared.

She accepted her silk shawl from Nancy and left the bedchamber. If Nathaniel made advances, if he embarked on his grand seduction, she would explain all that to him. She would make him understand that sometimes it is better not to know.

He paced, waiting for her to come down from her chamber. There was nothing casual about the way he moved. He trod a distinct path in the drawing room, back and forth, his strides determined and clear.

He resented his impatience and the agitation it caused. Images assaulted him, of Charlotte in his arms, of her warmth, her skin, her passion . . .

He kept insanity at bay by contemplating their recent conversations. She had alluded to blackmail hurting her family. Not her husband’s family. Her oldest brother had died young. There were whispers even now that it had been suicide.

He strode out the calculations. Charlotte would have been a girl. Fifteen, perhaps. His jaw tightened as he imagined the grief such a loss would have caused her. If she knew the reasons—he remembered Harry’s misery as the boy described seeing his mother’s body dragged from the river. Not only sorrow twisted the boy’s face, but also pain from the abandonment. Questions of why. Doubts about love.

Small wonder Charlotte had found Mardenford’s quiet lake so appealing. Of course she would despise Finley. She would hate any suggestion his blackmail had been based on fact, and that there might be secrets hidden in her adopted family as well, waiting to ruin her peace.

It was astonishing she had spoken to him again after he revealed his suspicions. He realized that she had only in an attempt to defeat and divert him, and to protect those she loved.

That was not the only conversation that kept returning to his brain as he paced. The other, out on the road, repeated again and again.
I should not have to choose whether to risk those memories here.
He did not think she only meant memories about their prior passion.

It was all tied together. Much still divided them, she had said. The chasm had actually deepened these last weeks, even as little indiscretions temporarily built bridges. Bridges made of air, perhaps. Maybe they could find common ground only if they met as strangers.

He found himself thinking that he did not want to know after all.

A sound penetrated his focused thoughts. He pivoted in mid-stride. Charlotte stood near the door.

“You are making a valley in the carpet,” she said. “Are you practicing a defense that is imminent?”

“Yes.”
No. I am thinking about you, and all that I don’t know and the little I do, and trying not to want you too much.

She looked so beautiful that he ached. The ivory and ecru of her dress enhanced her pale skin. Her shawl did not cover that skin well, despite the way she kept it high. Her lips looked very red. Not paint. The color had gathered in them due to the way she kept nipping the lower one.

That was the only sign she was nervous. Her bearing was proud and straight, her gaze level and distant. This was Lady M., with whom he had so often engaged in a battle of wits. This was the baron’s widow, whose intelligence and self-possession impressed society, and whose impeccable behavior had overcome the taints on her family name caused by other members’ less conventional lives.

He offered his arm. “They await us. Dinner was announced a while ago.”

“I dallied too long.”

“I did not mind waiting, since the result is so beautiful.”

She smiled weakly. They both knew she had not dallied for that. Half the time would have turned her out just as well.

She did not have to come down at all. She could have sent word she was tired, or ill, and taken her meal in her chamber.

But she had come down and now her hand was tucked around his arm. His deep contemplations seemed distant as he escorted her to the dining room. The gentle touch of her hand urged him to forget everything except the long night stretching in front of them.

Charlotte watched how the servants attended them at dinner. She noted the familiar smiles Nathaniel gave them, and the special care they took.

It had been thus since they arrived. The housekeeper had been overjoyed to see him. The sleepy house had come alive with his entry.

“They are happy you are here,” she said after finishing her meal. An excellent meal. She judged it had taken many hours to prepare. “They treat you as the master of the property. I suspect your brother is not greeted so warmly nor fed so well when he arrives to see his horses.”

“I often visited with my uncle when I was a boy. I was his favorite. Mostly, I think, because he also was the youngest of a large brood, and guessed how number five is something of an invisible addition.”

“I cannot imagine your ever being invisible.”

“I exploited the situation. I was fully grown before my father had any idea who I was.”