A Season to Be Sinful Read online

  “My God,” she said softly, more to herself than Sherry. “You’d never heard his name until I told you the boys stole for him.” At her sides, her fists clenched and unclenched. “Did you speak to anyone save Blue?”

  “No.”

  “Did you never once think that your life might be forfeit? You are ill suited for making inquiries in Holborn.”

  “Ill suited?”

  “Please, do not say I have offended you with that characterization. You must know that your presence in a place like the Blue Ruin cannot pass unnoticed. You might have been attacked again.”

  “I must point out that attempts on my life can be made anywhere. I am not in hiding. Further, I have only your word for what happened at Covent Garden. It may be that you were the intended victim. Have you considered that?”

  “It is a ridiculous notion. I am no one.”

  Sherry considered that, the shadow of something like a smile passing across his dark eyes. Quietly, he said, “So am I.”

  It was as peculiar a thing as he had ever said to her, and Lily had no response at the ready. She drew her knees up and applied herself to smoothing her shift across them. “I hope you do not mean to go there again. I should not like to think that anything you’ve learned from me will turn you in that direction.”

  “My direction is set,” he said. “Remember? I am leaving for the country.”

  Lily nodded. “Yes, of course. That is good, then.”

  “I am taking the lads.” He placed his intention before her baldly and watched her out of the corner of his eye for reaction. He did not think she would accuse him of pederasty again, but some fresh charge was not out of the question. What he saw transform her troubled features was a fine mixture of resignation and acceptance, all of it bittersweet. He removed his neckcloth and handed it to her.

  Lily offered an apologetic, watery smile and pressed the fine linen to her eyes. She held it there for several long moments, collecting herself. When she thought she could speak, she lowered it and idly began making new folds in the cloth. “It is what I hoped for,” she said finally. She stole a glance at him. “Not when I thought you might be a—” She shook her head, unwilling to speak of it yet again.

  “A pederast,” Sherry said.

  She nodded.

  “It shows some great sense on your part.” He watched her fingers made a second fold in the neckcloth and carefully crease it. She was no longer looking at him, but he had no doubt that she was hanging on his every word. “You will understand that I wish you had not accused me of such, although I do not acquit myself of helping to bring the thing about. It may be that I should have insisted you explain your earlier behavior, the exact nature of the threat you perceived, and in what manner I had provoked you. Still, your practice of saying whatever comes into your head is every bit as discomfiting as your practice of acting on it.”

  “Discomfiting?” she asked. “That surely understates it.”

  “And you make my point for me. Yes, it understates it. You would perhaps use words like repulsive or revolting. Vile and loathsome also come to mind. Indeed, I find your behavior all of that. Am I improved in any way by telling you so? I think not. And neither are you. Indeed, I have armed you with four more words with which you might bludgeon yourself.” He took her chin in the cup of his hand and turned her face toward him. “You are none of those things. None. I am speaking of what you do, not what you are.”

  “They cannot be so very different.”

  Sherry released her chin. “You will consider, Miss Rose, my foot and my boot.” He tapped his left foot on the floor to draw her attention to it. “The former is part and parcel of me, but I can change the latter anytime I choose to do so.”

  Lily considered the polished toe of his black leather boot. “I have but one pair, my lord. Change is not so simple a thing.”

  Sherry nudged her foot with his own. Her bare toes peeped out from beneath her gown, and he trod upon them very lightly. “Do not force me to belabor the metaphor. At this hour I have not the capacity for it.”

  Lily did something then that she had not believed she had the capacity for: she laughed. It lacked much in the way of robustness, but even soft and tremulous, it could not be mistaken for anything else. “Very well. I take your point, and it is most excellently made.” She started to ease her foot out from under his, but he pressed a bit harder and kept her there, not hurting, but not releasing her either. Turning to face Sheridan, her own features still imprinted with a trace of her smile, Lily saw that his regard of her was intent once again. “You are staring.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?” He didn’t answer immediately but continued to study her at his leisure and made no allowance for her own discomfort. She prompted him again. “My lord?”

  “I’m not certain,” he said at last. “In truth, I do not think I’ve seen the like before.” He offered no elaboration but removed his foot from Lily’s and rose in a single fluid movement. While she was still blinking up at him in some surprise, he quit the room.

  Activity in the townhouse was orchestrated chaos, or at least it seemed so to Lily, whose vantage point was behind her bedchamber door. She heard the orders, the grumbling, the heavy footfalls and the light ones. A trunk thudded to the floor. Someone cursed. Valises thumped against the wall as servants made an awkward transport of them. There was only the occasional lull, and it was followed with a fresh surge of stirring by people filled with purpose.

  With so much noise and no direction from anyone to curtail it, Lily surmised that Lord Sheridan was already gone from home. These final preparations for his journey to the country would have been accomplished a great deal more quietly if he had been in residence. Even shutting himself in his library would have provided little in the way of sanctuary this morning.

  It had provided him little enough last night.

  Lily’s eyes dropped to the breakfast tray on her lap. She had known when the maid set it before her that she would not be able to eat, but she had not felt up to listening to the haughty complaining if she’d refused the repast. The fare was cold now. The egg yellows were congealed so thickly that poking them with a fork would not cause them to run. The thin slices of tomato were lying in their own red, watery juices, and the bangers were glued to the plate by their hardened drippings. The pyramid of burnt toast crumbs was larger than the two triangles of bread from which they were scraped.

  Lily moved the tray off her lap and slipped out of bed. She padded to the window, knelt on the bench, and pressed her forehead to the glass. Disappointed that she could not see the street, she remained there nevertheless.

  She imagined the carriage and four that were standing at the ready by the front entrance. The boys would be dancing with excitement, most likely getting underfoot as they assisted with the packing. To her knowledge they had never been gone from London. Except for their forays into Covent Garden, they rarely ventured out of Holborn. Their entire world was a tiny parcel of land bounded by wretched tenements and slop-strewn alleys. That they should have this opportunity to leave fairly took her breath away.

  She could not cry, of course, when they came to make their farewell. She would make a convincing lie of it and tell them she would be joining them when she was well enough. Sheridan had not asked it of her—indeed, she had not spoken to him since his abrupt and confounding departure from the library—but Lily was of the opinion that she owed him a dignified exit with the boys and that any sort of high drama would have revealed a remarkable want of pride.

  She had little enough of it left after debasing herself at his feet last night. Wishing the boys off with Godspeed was but one way that she could hold on to that small remaining measure.

  Lost in this reverie and finally deaf to the noises beyond her room, Lily did not turn away from the window until the door to her bedchamber was flung open. The boys were almost upon her by the time she was sitting properly on the bench. She welcomed them, smiling gamely just in the manner she’d promise
d herself she would, then redoubled her efforts when she saw the scoundrels had not arrived alone.

  Lord Sheridan stood on the threshold, filling most of the doorway that framed him. His dark eyes were perfectly unfathomable.

  “How can it be, Miss Rose, that all of us are properly turned out for traveling and you are still in your bedclothes? You will find the journey considerably more comfortable if you are dressed for it.”

  Seven

  The coach and four that Lily imagined would carry the boys and Lord Sheridan to Granville was in reality two coaches and a pair of beautifully matched cinnamon-colored horses for each. The equipage she was expected to ride in was as fine a carriage as she had ever seen in the theatre district or the park, with the exception of the prince’s own.

  She still had no proper understanding of how she had come to be aboard it.

  The mechanics of the thing were comprehensible, of course. She’d been given the rum-hustle, or at least a version of it, for at the end of some gentle prodding, a bit of misdirection, and a great deal of artful evasion, she’d found herself being helped into the carriage by the footman Dunnet.

  The scoundrels and Sheridan had left her long enough for two maids to attend her and turn her out. Then the prodding had been something less than gentle, and Lily had felt more in the way of being turned inside out. The clothing they’d carried in was not made for her, but of a size with the robe she had worn the night before. The maids were nimble with a needle and thread and made short work of the alterations, though Lily thought they too often found her a convenient pincushion.

  They gave her hair a hard brushing, pinched her cheeks, and fussed with the fit of her dress across the shoulders and back. They critically studied the embroidered front of the shell pink jaconet muslin to be certain the line of it fell just so and showed no compunction about reaching inside the gown’s bodice to yank on the undergarments to perfect the fit.

  She had only a glimpse of the bonnet before it was placed on her head, but it appeared to be of the latest stare with its chimney pot shape and a splendid plume sticking out of the top like a sweep’s broom. They gave her no opportunity in front of the cheval glass to be critical of either herself or their work. Once they had fastened the gray cottage mantle over her shoulders and turned back the collar to reveal the pink silk lining, they escorted her to the door and stood aside.

  Lily judged herself to have made a good presentation because the boys stopped dancing about, and for once there was naught but silence from their open mouths. Although she was too bemused to fully appreciate their reaction, she nevertheless counted it as a good thing that Lord Sheridan no longer accompanied them. He had more in the way of good manners than to subject her to the same much-struck expression as the children, but no matter what his regard, she would have been more unsettled by it than flattered.

  “I say, Miss Rose, this is a good piece of luck.” Dash’s speech had a slightly nasal intonation as his nose was flattened against the carriage window. “Would you look at that? That bloke’s starin’ at us just like we was toffs.”

  “He’s staring because you’re staring,” she told him. “Please come away from there and sit down.”

  Dash peeled himself off the glass and dropped to the bench beside Midge. He looked pointedly at Pinch who was similarly pressed to the other window but had not yet drawn attention to himself.

  “Pinch,” Lily said. She caught him by the back of his jacket and tugged lightly. Grinning, he settled himself at her side. “We want to give a good accounting of ourselves and not abuse his lordship’s generosity. He will not like it if people stare at us.”

  “’Ow would ’e know?” Midge asked. “’E’s ridin’ by ’imself on that great black beast.”

  “Killies,” Pinch said. “’Eard ’im call the beast Killies.”

  Lily smiled. “Might he have said Achilles?”

  “Might ’ave.”

  “Achilles was a warrior,” she explained. “He fought with Odysseus at Troy. Do you remember what I told you about that war?”

  They did, but they had no objections to hearing it again, and in this way Lily diverted them for much of the journey through London proper. They were well into the countryside before the adventures of the King of Ithaca began to pall. When neither the sirens or the cyclops could hold their attention, Lily let them amuse themselves at the windows again.

  More tired than she cared to admit, even to herself, Lily removed her bonnet and rested her head back against the leather squabs. The boys chattered, traded views, dirtied the glass with their handprints, and occasionally squabbled. Sometimes they sighted Sheridan far ahead of the carriages, taking a turn in the road or going over a rise, and they would marvel at his mastery of the great warrior beast.

  Lily listened to them with half an ear, not unhappy that they were more than a little in awe of Sheridan. She could own that it was not so different for her, though perhaps it was more unwise.

  As Dash had said, it was a good piece of luck. All of it. She was not anxious to have another blade poked under her ribs, but it was difficult not to think of it now as providential. Lily had no clear sense of what Sheridan meant to do with them once they arrived at his country home, but for Pinch, Dash, and Midge it had to be better than anything they could expect in Holborn.

  For herself, the future was not so easily divined. She hadn’t the least idea what might be expected of her now. She was certain that he had meant to leave her behind, yet sometime over the course of what was left of the night, he had changed his mind. From Lily’s perspective, there was no comprehending it. More to the point, she was not certain she wanted to. Distance between them was not only prudent, it was necessary. She had no wish to bridge it with the sort of understanding that would forever put him in her mind, or her in his.

  Lily fingered the brim of her bonnet, turning it idly in her lap as she made an accounting of her prospects. Each time the carriage rocked, the bonnet’s heavy plume fluttered so that the tip of it tickled her under the chin and distracted her from her musings. Perhaps if she’d had more prospects, or a more ambitious muse, the effect of the swaying plume would not have been hypnotic, but such was not the case, and it was not long before Lily surrendered herself to a very deep sleep.

  Granville lay well north and west of London, a three days’ journey on horseback if the horse was prime and the rider tireless. By carriage, the trip required a full sennight and that was dependent upon fair skies and the ease with which failures of either of the carriages might be remedied.

  Sherry’s desire to arrive at Granville was such that he contemplated riding far ahead of the carriages and coming to the residence a full four days before them. Because of the entourage he had acquired, he restrained himself, though his mood was in no way improved by it. Instead, he allowed himself no longer a leash than the distance to each night’s lodging. He would arrive at the hostelry hours before the carriages, make arrangements with the innkeeper for lodgings, then find diversion in the nearest village. This often involved games of chance, card play, sharing a pint with the locals, and—on the evening of the fourth day—sharing several satisfying hours in the bed of a comely widow whose acquaintance he’d made on previous journeys.

  “She is liberal with her scent, my lord,” Lily said when Sheridan called upon her room before retiring. “One can scarce smell the drink on you for the perfume.”

  Sherry decided the surest means of niggling her was offering no reply at all. He looked past her shoulder as she opened her door wider and saw the three scoundrels were already abed and sleeping soundly. “That bed does not look as if it will accommodate you and the boys. Shall I inquire about another room?”

  Lily shook her head. “It is sufficient, even comfortable.”

  “The first may be true, but to say it is comfortable strains belief.”

  She shrugged.

  Sheridan lifted his chin to indicate the sleeping children. “Midget seems to lay claim to more than his fair share.”
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br />   Lily did not glance back. A small crease appeared between her brows. “What did you call him?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Midget.”

  “I hope you will not call him such to his face. He is liable to forget himself and threaten to blacken your eye.”

  “He is not Midget, then?”

  “No. Their names are all of a piece. Pinch. Dash.” She paused deliberately, giving him another opportunity to work it out. “It is perhaps that you have never spent much time in any of your homes with your cooks. He is—”

  “Smidgen.” Sherry chuckled. “Of course.”

  “They were being chased for stealing spices from a baker’s shop when I met them.”

  “You offered them sanctuary.”

  “After a fashion. They hid behind my skirts.”

  “All three?”

  “Pinch and Dash. Smidgen was being carried off by the baker’s wife.” The memory raised a faint smile. “He wiggled out of his jacket and made his escape. It was quite something.”

  Sherry’s gaze dropped momentarily to Lily’s mouth. As quick as that, her smile disappeared, and Sherry was sorry for his lapse. It had occurred to him that she might have been persuaded to join him in the taproom for tea and conversation, but he knew now that the overture would be rebuffed. It was not that he smelled of another woman’s scent that put him out of favor with her but that he smelled of drink. Lily was invariably wary when she thought he had compromised temperance, and Sherry acknowledged he was indeed too proud to explain that more was spilled on him than was drunk.

  Knowing himself reluctant to take his leave, Sherry asked, “They have been with you ever since their narrow escape?”

  “After a fashion. They have never lived with me.”

  “But they are under your protection.”

  “It is more accurate that I let it be known that I have an interest in the boys. I can provide precious little in the way of protection. If it were not for Blue, I would have already lost them.”