Three Nights of Sin

To Bella Andre, Jami Alden, Barbara Freethy,
Jacqueline Yau, and our favorite
Starbucks haunt for tolerating hours of
silent typing interspersed with raucous
(and at times “eccentric”) conversations.

London, 1825

T
he brass ring in the lion’s mouth glimmered in the faint light of the gas lamps. Fierce yellow eyes surveyed her from above the loop, questioning her nerve. Marietta Winters curled trembling fingers around the bottom of the metal and forced it against the door knocker.

The brisk night air sliced into her skin. She adjusted her loathed shawl more tightly around her shoulders and pressed her ear closer to the door.

Nothing.

She looked into the lion’s eyes, swallowed, then rapped the knocker once more.

Silence echoed in the night, only the shifting breeze an answer to her desperation. She wondered if this was to be the end of her search—an empty hall and no one at home. Another closed door. The final nail in Kenny’s coffin.

No. She couldn’t think that way.

A faint trembling shook her. Nerves and stress and fear. She hadn’t slept in days. Hadn’t eaten a real meal in twice that time—a loaf of bread stretched between. Her older brother’s insistence on no one knowing their straits had turned the food money into Mark’s new cloak for the races, new boots for Kenny, and a shawl for her.

Utter stupidity.

And yet had she just kept her mouth shut…not argued with Mark—their row causing Kenny to flee the house…

The trembling grew worse. She had to hold it together. A broken rhythm caused her head to whip up. Footsteps, not tremors. Someone had paused for a moment. The footfalls grew nearer, the heavy clack of a man’s boots pounding against a marble floor.

She straightened, inclined her head and tried to still the desperate beat of her heart.

The steps stopped on the other side of the oak frame.
Please, oh please, let him be at home.
She had nowhere else to go. All other doors had been closed.

The oak swung with nary a sound, nary a creak.

She squinted at the sudden brilliance. A large man leaned against the door, bright light from the hall backlighting him and casting his features into relief.

“Yes?”

His voice was gravelly. And annoyed. No pleasantries, then. Not that she had expected any. No respectable woman would be calling at this hour of the night. Rockwood had urged her to send a note in the morning to set up a meeting, but she couldn’t afford to wait that long—she’d never avoid the mob
during the daylight hours. And Rockwood, with his talk of this mysterious man, had given her a thread of hope that she couldn’t bear for sleep to break.

“I need to speak to Mr. Noble.” She wished her voice was stronger, calmer.

The man looked past her, scanning the street, before returning his gaze. She wished she could see his features beyond the shadowy contours of his face. “Bit of an odd time to be calling for tea.”

She clutched her reticule. “Yes. But it is urgent that I speak with Mr. Noble.” She swallowed. “Please.”

“Mr. Noble isn’t taking
visitors
this time of night. Return in the morning.” His voice was still gruff, but the edge that had been there before softened into something deep and crisp.

Her pride had once been a mile wide. So fierce and strong that she’d thought she could survive on the trait alone. The constant ache in her belly, the desperation, Kenny’s fate…all had shown her otherwise. She fumbled in her reticule for the card she had stuffed there two hours ago. “Please. I can’t return in the morning. Please. Here.” She thrust the card forward. Anything, anything, to gain her entrance.

His shadowed eyes surveyed her for a long moment. Long fingers reached forward to grip the card. She let his fingers remove it from hers with reluctance, taking the chance that this man, this servant, might rip it in two. He gave the card a cursory glance and flipped it over his fingers, the card traveling down to his smallest finger and than flipping back. A game for him, but that card represented her brother’s life. His eyes held hers, piercing through the shadows.

She tilted her chin up. Her pride may have been trampled, but her determination ran deep. She would see Mr. Noble.

Something changed in the man’s posture, though she couldn’t pinpoint what in the dark. He stepped back. She offered up a quick prayer and ducked inside.

The hall was lovely, the address expensive, so it shouldn’t have surprised her, but the gold, navy, and mahogany shades were tasteful and elegant without being overstated. Mr. Noble was obviously someone who showed his wealth well.

She turned to say something and felt her mouth drop before she snapped it close.

“Thank you for letting me wait inside.” She gripped her reticule to keep her hands steady. As if throwing herself on the mercy of a stranger in the dead of night wasn’t enough to disconcert her…

Tall and rather well made, the disheveled but expensive cut of his clothing displayed strong shoulders with no padding in sight. There was considerably less clothing on this man than she was accustomed to seeing. Jacket, vest, cravat, and anything else that he might have worn had been shed so that he sported only a white shirt, open at the collar, and black trousers. He was slimmer than the boxing brute she had first thought him, though by no means skinny. She swallowed, refining her first thought—he was
extremely
well made.

And his face…A wave of warmth caressed her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. Long dark lashes brushed over brilliant green eyes. Eyes
that most women would kill for. But no woman would call him pretty. His cheekbones were too stark. His jaw too strong.

A compelling face, arresting,
sensual
. He had a masculine beauty that was nearly otherworldly.

But there was a cynical bend to his left brow. A tilt to his head. A jaded expression that said he knew the exact reaction his looks provoked.

One dark brow rose higher.

She blinked, heat suffusing her as she realized she’d been blatantly staring.

“I need to speak with Mr. Noble. Please. I know it is late, but…”

Women likely threw themselves at this man’s feet every day, but that didn’t cure her embarrassment nor assuage her desperation. Unless he could charm the guards into releasing Kenny, or stop the mobs from tearing anyone associated with him apart, this man’s beauty would do her little good.

Unreadable green eyes surveyed her. She met his stare, forcing the heat from her cheeks. She would not back down. Noble was her last resort. Her last bastion. The one sliver of hope she had left.

He gestured with his arm and pivoted, striding down the hall, the prized card that had gained her entrance loosely clasped between two of his fingers. She hesitated for half a second, then followed.

He led her into a dimly lit study. A fire crackled in the hearth. Papers littered a deep mahogany desk, piles of books and documents stacked haphazardly across the surface. He flicked the card onto the desk, and it was instantly swallowed.

He pointed to a chair and then disappeared back into the hall without another word spoken.

She tentatively perched at the edge of the burgundy chair. Perhaps the man was a relation? An odd valet? The cut of his clothes was fine, even in dishabille, but his mannerisms were reminiscent of a butler. How he pointed to her chair, the motion to follow from the hall. The way he walked, as if attempting to blend into his surroundings, and
almost
succeeding. A task of Sisyphean proportions. Not with that face. Not with the way he filled his clothes or held himself.

The beautiful man strode back through the door, grabbed a tome from one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and rounded the desk. The book thumped onto the tottering stack.
Debrett’s Peerage
. He dropped into the large chocolate leather chair and leaned back, drumming his fingers on the only uncovered portion of mahogany.

“Now, what is it you need so desperately that you had to appear at such an hour, Miss…?”

She was speechless for a moment. “I need to speak with Mr. Noble.”

“Then congratulations, you have achieved your purpose. Shall I see you to the door?” He motioned behind her, his eyes piercing. His body was languid in the chair, belying his expression and the tilt of his dark head. Commanding, yet dissolute.

Her shoulders tightened. “You are Mr. Noble?”

“I am.”

Her breath caught at the formal admission and expression in his sharp, abnormally vivid green eyes. The mannerisms he had displayed before seemed lu
dicrous all of a sudden—an impulsive flight of fancy on her part. The man seated in front of her looked as ruthless and capable as she’d been told.

Something in her rebelled. “But you answered the door. And your dress.” She waved a hand at his simple white shirt, loose and slightly rumpled above black trousers.

His brow rose and he picked up a half coiled piece of wire and began winding it around his finger. “It’s the dead of night. My butler, and two of my footmen, are out on a task for me. If we are making assumptions…”

His eyes passed over her mussed hair, which had long since escaped its pins, to her clutched hands and battered reticule, down to the mud-stained hem of her dress. “You look as if you are two steps from being a washerwoman, yet your bearing speaks otherwise. You hold your head as if you possess breeding. Not that a member of the—” He gave her another once over. “—gentry, is it?—would be afforded more goodwill from me than a washerwoman. I’ve often found the opposite to be true. A washerwoman earns her place in this world, after all.”

She had a sudden fierce desire to show him what she could do with the
earned
pistol hidden in her torn dress pocket.

“How did you come across this card?” He plucked it from the mess, twirling it negligently between his fore and middle fingers. “Rockwood’s card. One would assume he gave it to you.”

“How did you…?” There had been no identifying marks on the card. Nothing to say Rockwood had pos
sessed it. It had simply said mr. noble in a gilded but plain script.

“What is your name?” he asked, instead of answering.

His eyes held a vast well of impatience, but there was a hint of something else there that gave her the slightest bit of hope. Curiosity.

She cleared her throat. She wanted to hold onto that slice of hope. She didn’t want to give him her name. The dried spit on her hem and scrubbed tomato splotches on her back and knees were reminders of what happened when she did.

“Marietta Winters.”

His eyes narrowed and the tips of his fingers whitened around the card. “I see. And what, Miss Winters, are you doing inside of my study at this hour?”

“I need help.”

“Don’t we all.” He tossed the card onto the cluttered desktop and negligently began coiling the wire again, his eyes sharp. “Why come to me?”

“I was told you helped those in need.” She called on everything inside of her to keep the desperation from showing.

“How interesting.”

Her throat tightened. “Was Mr. Rockwood mistaken? Have I wasted precious time in coming to you?” Dashed, just like that. The sliver of hope dimmed. Foolish of her to think otherwise—hope had long since abandoned her.

Yet she raised her head higher, determination outstripping reason. A stubborn mouse on a desperate quest. And like a bird of prey, he watched her. He
hadn’t
stopped
his predatory assessment since he’d opened the door. It was unnerving in more ways than one, and if she weren’t so mulish, she might have succumbed to the sharpness there, the hit to her pride.

His head tipped. “Surely Rockwood explained how I work. I rarely accept charity cases from members of the ton.”

His tone was mild, almost curiously still, even with the thread of arrogance running beneath. She grasped the edges of her dignity. “He said your services cost ten thousand pounds.”

“They do.”

“Or…” She swallowed. Here was where the danger lay. “Or three favors.”

He kept coiling the wire. “And did he explain what type of favors I might ask?”

“No,” she whispered.

A dark grin flashed across his face. “Good on Rockwood.”

She remembered the vaguely terrified expression on Rockwood’s face as he’d talked about Gabriel Noble.
The man makes dukes tremble
,
Marietta
,
be careful
. If there had been another way…

She looked at the man dominating the space across from her. Arrogant and cold. If there was another way…but there wasn’t. She was penniless. The law against her. Ostracized. Rockwood had taken pity on her, mainly due to the longstanding ties between their families.

Gabriel Noble…he was going to make her toil for every last bit of his help. He would break her remaining pride. She could see it in his icy emerald eyes.

But Rockwood had told her in no uncertain terms that if there was one person who could help her, it was Noble. And she had no other choices. Not if she was going to save Kenny.

“My brother was taken by the night watch two evenings ago.” She’d been awake and running for help ever since. Fear and abject obstinacy were the only things keeping her upright. “They are charging him with murder. A—” She swallowed. “A constable said they are going to attempt to hurry through a trial.” She looked blindly down, unable to focus. “They mean to hang him.”

“The Middlesex murderer.”

Her head shot up. “He is not!”

“That is what they mean to hang him for, though, is it not?”

The faded red splat of a tomato stain glowed on the fabric above her kneecap. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“News travels fast in my circles.” His voice was silky and smooth, but still ice cold. “And even if it didn’t, it’s hardly a difficult thing to determine between your appearance, the timing, and your last name.”

“Then…then you know—”

“That your brother is Kenneth Winters? Seems likely.”

“He’s not a murderer.” Her lips pressed together.

“Of that, I have no idea.”

Silence sat like a stone. Noble seemed quite willing to let it gather moss.

But he hadn’t said no yet. “Will you help me?”

“Help you prove your brother innocent? Or help
you avoid any more brushes with the locals?” He motioned to her dress.