Authors: Erica Ridley

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

Too Sinful to Deny (23 page)

BOOK: Too Sinful to Deny

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She blinked. In that second, her amorous gaze went from satisfied to horrified.

She gave a tiny scream and cracked her forehead against his in her desperation to flee his embrace. The pain in his skull was the least of his concerns. She scrambled backward, her expression aghast.

“No.” Her face drained of all color. She began to shake her head. “No. Oh, no. No, no, no.”

The hard shaft in Evan’s hand stopped pulsing.

“I—I—” She rolled away from him with such force she tumbled onto the floor. In seconds she was on her feet, smoothing her hopelessly wrinkled skirts, gripping her silk gloves. She forced them over trembling fingers without meeting his eyes, then backed toward the door. “I can’t. I . . . no. I don’t know what in the bloody hell I was thinking. Dear Lord, I
wasn’t
thinking. We can’t do this.
I
can’t do this. My—my husband—”

“Your
what?
” Evan stared at her, mouth open, cock in hand.

“Not yet,” she rushed to assure him, “but the one I
do
get is going to assume certain things, such as me never having done a single thing that we just did and—” She yanked open the door, then turned her anguished gaze on him. “Believe what you will, I am a lady. I wish to be treated as such. By you, by everyone, by the man whom I will marry. He will expect to bed a virgin on his wedding night. I expect to
be
one.”

Evan’s fading cock slipped from his slackened grip of its own accord.

“I don’t fancy being another one of your conquests,” she continued, a creeping blush bringing color back into her deathly pale cheeks. “I have a conquest of my own to make.
London.
And to succeed, I need to guard what few advantages I still have.” She backed into the hall. “Please don’t kiss me again. Please don’t touch me again. Ever.”

With that, she was gone. The latch clicked in place behind her with the cold finality of a jailer slamming a prison cell shut.

Chapter 17

Evan rebuttoned his fall. He reasoned that Miss Stanton’s inglorious flight from the bedchamber had actually saved both of them from making an exceptionally unwise mistake. He doubted it was just the crack to the head that had made her speak the one word guaranteed to deflate the ardor of a man who’d never tumbled the same woman twice:

Husband.

Luckily, if also a bit insultingly, she clearly had no matrimonial designs on him whatsoever. Unluckily, her desire to remain a virgin until her wedding night—for which he would certainly not be present—precluded them from lovemaking.

He pushed off the bed and glanced about the chamber to make sure he hadn’t left any evidence of his presence. A long-instilled habit. Although he had never intended to lay with other men’s wives, the women in his past had not always been honest about such details. No, he’d left nothing behind. Except perhaps a bit of his pride.

Miss Stanton’s hair comb, however, poked out from the wrinkled folds of the tester. In fact, the entire mattress was awash with wrinkles. He pocketed the tiny comb and idly wondered what the servants would make of the disarray. Perhaps they would assume their master and mistress had tired of their bedchamber and sought excitement in an alternate venue. Evan chuckled. For all he knew, the overgrown oaf made love to his wife everywhere
but
their bedchamber. Perhaps the woman wasn’t “too sick for visitors” so much as simply exhausted.

He stepped into the hall. Since he was here, he might as well find Ollie. The servants might be close-lipped to outsiders, but they’d certainly mention Evan’s presence to their master. Come to think of it, since the brute wasn’t currently breathing down his neck, perhaps now was the opportune moment to search for the ornate box they’d unburied from the garden.

He headed downstairs. First step: Check the dining room mantle to see if the similar-looking ornate box were still present. If it was now missing, then at least he’d have solved that much of the mystery. If not . . . well, then he’d keep searching.

The dining room was empty, but embers still burned in the fireplace. They offered just enough relief from the shadows for Evan to take inventory of the mantle’s contents. Brandy. A forgotten cigar. An unlit candelabra. And the same gilded jewelry box that had always sat there.

He plucked a taper from the candelabra and bent the wick to the last of the dying flames. No easy task. He used the thin candle to light the rest of the candelabra and returned the taper to its original location. In the ensuing orange glow, the bejeweled box looked the same as it ever had . . . with two notable exceptions.

First, the jewel-encrusted lid was now closed. Before, it had remained open, the better to exhibit its empty but delicately sculpted interior. Second, the dark clump lodged inside the tiny lock was nothing more than . . . dirt?

It
was
the same jewelry box. He knew it!

He picked up the surprisingly heavy container and gave it a careful shake. Empty. Even without opening the lid to verify, there were no telltale sounds of clinking jewelry or shifting weight as the box’s contents slid from one side to the other. Nonetheless, he tugged carefully at the heavy lid. Locked. He’d need a key to open the damn thing. He glanced up to look for one—and found both Ollie and his lapdog standing in the doorway watching him.

Evan froze, his fingertips poised at the crevice between lid and receptacle.

Ollie was the first to step into the room. “Devilish tricky to open without the key, isn’t it?”

Evan couldn’t very well act as if that weren’t precisely what he’d been attempting to do, so he didn’t bother to playact. Instead, he removed his fingertips from the stubborn lock and held out his palm toward Ollie. “Got the key handy?”

Ollie ignored Evan’s outstretched hand, returned the heavy jewelry box to the mantle, and set about pouring a glass of brandy. He did not offer any to Evan. Just as well, for this seemed a moment where keeping a clear head would be wise.

“Why is the box closed?” he asked.

Ollie downed his first brandy and poured himself another without responding.

“Because we haven’t got the key,” rasped the jaundiced servant, crossing the room to stand by his master.

Ollie’s jaw tightened, but he simply capped the brandy and lifted his glass to his lips.

Evan turned his gaze to the wiry butler. “Where is the key?”

“Don’t know,” came the scratchy reply.

“Where did you last see it?”

“Never have.”

“Never?” Evan repeated incredulously.

“Don’t think there ever was one.” The servant shrugged one bony shoulder. “That’s why we kept it open.”

“Why do you care?” Ollie interrupted at last, his dark gaze focused on Evan.

“Why do
you?
” Evan gestured at the little box. “Damn thing’s empty.”

“Feels empty,” the servant corrected slyly. “Can’t know for certain until it’s open.”

True enough. “If you want inside that badly, a second or two with a hammer ought to do the trick.”

Ollie shook his head. “No hammer, no shovel, no ax. Didn’t you feel how heavy it was? All that delicate gold filigree and intricate ornamentation hides an iron core. Literally. It’s a strongbox, meant to look like a fribble’s gewgaw.”

Evan turned toward the innocuous-looking jewelry box again, nonplussed. Brilliant, that. How many times had he seen the thing on the mantle and never given it a passing thought? He wondered in which port Ollie had found such a treasure. And why it hadn’t come with a key.

“Fair bit of dirt stuck in the keyhole,” he commented idly.

The butler’s teeth flashed. “That was milady’s handiwork, it was. She likes to—”

“—play games,” Ollie finished, casting his lapdog a silencing look.

The servant’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his skinny throat, but he didn’t contradict his master’s obvious lie.

Why lie? Well, yes, Ollie was a pirate and as such lied on a regular basis, but not typically to Evan, and certainly not about something as silly as whether his wife had buried a trick jewelry box in a fit of matrimonial pique.

He frowned. She couldn’t be
that
sick, if she was well enough to traipse downstairs, carry a heavy box and an equally heavy shovel out to the rock garden, and bury the former in the dirt. And add a gravestone.

Perhaps she was socially . . . awkward. Or painfully shy. Or simply reclusive. Given her parents’ history, she would not have had what could be termed a typical childhood.

He picked up the box again, hefting its weight. There had to be some way to open it. “Can I take it home for a few days?”

“No.”

Not even a breath had passed before the refusal came.

Evan replaced the box on the mantle, unsurprised at Ollie’s answer. No matter if it were nothing more precious than ordinary snuff inside an ordinary snuff box, Ollie wasn’t one to share what was his when he didn’t wish to. Perhaps it was time to turn the topic.

“Are you going to join the captain’s crew?”

Ollie’s dark brows lifted. He gestured with his now-empty glass. “Leave all this?”

Evan inclined his head and wondered whether there was any truth to the captain’s promise to leave them behind alive and well, if they decided not to enlist.

Normally, he would’ve shared such concerns with Ollie. But Evan still wasn’t 100 percent certain whose side Ollie was on—if on anyone’s side but his own. He
was
certain he had overstayed his welcome. Particularly since they were all aware of his unannounced arrival and subsequent ignominious discovery in the dining room.

“I’m for home, then.”

He took a step toward the doorway. The butler stepped aside, his tiny eyes watchful.

With his broad back facing Evan, Ollie refilled his brandy glass without turning around.

“Do that.”

Right. Evan had definitely overstayed his nonexistent welcome.

He quit the dining room. He eased the door shut behind him and made his way toward the rear exit. Partly because the back door led more directly to the trail going toward Evan’s house. And partly because he wouldn’t mind having another look at the rock garden, now that he knew a woman too frail to leave her bed had supposedly decided to do a bit of nontraditional gardening.

At the time, he had thought Timothy might’ve been buried in that third grave, but what had everyone else been thinking? They couldn’t all have been after an empty jewelry box.

Evan could scarce ask Forrester what he’d been doing there without admitting to his own presence. Miss Stanton, however . . . Evan cursed himself as he realized he’d missed several good opportunities to ask her just what exactly she’d thought had been buried beneath that unmarked gravestone. Next time he saw her, he’d—

Jasmine. There she was. Right by the rear door.

Not facing the exit, however. She stared in the opposite direction, down a darkened stairwell Evan assumed led to a larder. Miss Stanton had her back to him, her outstretched hands splayed against each stone wall, a booted foot hovering over the first step.

He approached with caution. “What are you—”

She jumped, spun around, pushed him.

He didn’t budge.

She put a finger to her lips, eyes wide. “Shhh.”

Evan stayed quiet, more out of perplexity than any desire to be obedient. The woman made absolutely no sense.

She turned back toward the blackness, dismissing him.

He considered leaving as planned.

Galling as it was, she seemed to have forgotten their aborted lovemaking in her obsession with—with what? She was neither descending the staircase nor returning fully to the hallway. She was doing precisely nothing.

He was wasting his time. She wanted a husband; he wanted to run off screaming. Why he continued standing next to her instead of running, he wasn’t entirely sure. She was a marriage-minded woman. He was a bachelor-minded man. Expectations of commitment accompanied any relationship she entered. Consequence-free encounters were the only variety he ever had. So it wasn’t as if there was anything left to discuss.

He had almost turned to leave when he remembered they still did have plenty left unsaid, once he dropped his sexual frustration and wounded pride from the picture. He hated the idea that this woman who’d fled from him seconds after finding release would eagerly bed some insipid
ton
fop, simply because he had something other than “Mister” before his name.

With such an image in his head, no wonder he’d almost forgotten why he’d come here in the first place. It wasn’t because he’d missed her. Not at all. It was because he didn’t trust her.

“Did you tell Harriet Grey her brother was dead?” he demanded.

“Shhh!” She flapped a hand at him as if shushing a recalcitrant child and then whispered, “Not my finest moment, I admit. Do be quiet and let me listen.”

He stared at the back of her blond head.

Not her finest moment? What the devil did that mean? He’d expected her to deny the accusation. She had not. Which meant it was true. How, he couldn’t begin to fathom. He had no guesses as to where she’d met an unsavory like Red in the first place—particularly since such a meeting would’ve had to occur prior to her arrival in Bournemouth—much less who would have informed her of his death.

“How did you know he—”

“
Shhh.
” She tugged him closer. “Help me listen.”

Irritably realizing he wouldn’t get anywhere with her until he’d indulged whatever fantasy had gripped her nonsensical mind, he cocked his head to the side and listened. Hard. For several long moments. Then he gave up.

“I hear nothing.”

“Me neither.” She turned to him, her eyes almost as wide as the lenses of her spectacles. “I wonder what it means.”

It meant she was utterly off her hooks, by the look of it. What kind of noises
would
come from a larder? Pheasants, rising from the dead?

“I have to see,” she whispered. “Come with me. I don’t want to go by myself.”

She took three or four steps into the darkness. She stopped, glanced up at him, and gestured for him to hurry.

Evan sighed. If Ollie caught them spying on neat little rows of tins and jars, Evan would never hear the end of it. The crew had taunted Evan and Timothy for their alleged “fancy” tastes ever since they’d both balked at the slop they’d been served in dusty bowls their first night aboard ship. Evan felt no shame for liking good food. But he didn’t particularly want to set himself up for another round of ribbing when now more than ever it seemed wise to stay out of the captain’s eye. And out of Ollie’s house.

Miss Stanton, however, had not stopped staring up at him and making furious “Come
on!
” motions with her hands.

All right, fine. But she’d better hurry.

BOOK: Too Sinful to Deny

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