One Wicked Sin

“London by night.” Lottie was sitting forward, holding the curtain back so that she could look out of the carriage window. “I have missed its amusements.”

There was something wistful in her tone, a regret for all she had lost, perhaps. For it did not matter how much he paid her at the end of their association, Ethan thought. She would never regain the life she had once had. Ton society was closed to her forever.

“How did you come to this?” he asked. He was not sure why he was even interested. Lottie’s misfortunes were none of his affair. And yet he wanted to know how a seemingly intelligent woman had got herself into so desperate a situation. He was curious about her.

He could feel her eyes on him in the darkness of the carriage as though she was thinking about how much to tell him, whether to lie, perhaps, and paint her case as more sympathetic than it was. He was as indifferent to her scrutiny as he would be to her falsehoods. She would read nothing in his face. He just wanted to know her story. It would pass the time since the traffic was slow at this time of night.

“You know what happened to me,” she said, after a pause. “You told me yourself.”

“I know what happened, not why.”

She turned away, hunched a shoulder. “My husband divorced me because I became too careless and indiscreet in my love affairs.” For a split second, in a shaft of light, he saw her face, remote and hard. “I always was imprudent,” she said. “I liked the danger. But I let it go too far. I was too reckless.”

Ethan smiled.

I liked the danger….

He understood that because he liked danger, too. He liked the risk and the thunder in the blood and the race of the pulse, for what else was there to live for when everything you cared about had been taken away? He had been right. That instinct that had told him that Lottie Palliser was wild as he, a kindred spirit, had been correct. It should make her perfect for his purpose.

There was quiet but for the roll of the carriage wheels over the cobbles and the clop of the horse’s hooves. Outside the nighttime world spun about them with its glitter and gaiety, the noise of the crowd, the taste of excitement in the air.

“I can understand why your family might disown you,” Ethan said. The Pallisers were very high in the instep and divorce, scandal, would be anathema to them. “But surely you had friends who would help you—”

A quick shake of her head silenced him. “I tried to seduce the husband of my best friend,” she said. “That was her second husband. He refused me. I had already slept with her first one.”

It took a very great deal to surprise Ethan. This did not even come close. Besides, he had heard some tone in her voice that betrayed her, that was at odds with the brashness of her words.

“Are you trying to shock me?” he asked.

Her eyes gleamed. “Am I succeeding?”

“Not remotely.”

“Oh well.” She sounded cross, like a thwarted child. “I could try harder but to tell the truth I cannot be bothered to do so.”

“You wanted your friend’s husband,” Ethan said. “Why?”

He sensed her surprise. “Do you know,” she said slowly, “no one has ever asked me that before?”

“Well?”

“You sound like a stern governess.” She sounded petulant. “I don’t know! I was bored, he was handsome….”

Ethan knew she was lying. He could hear it. He also knew she would not tell him the truth. Not now, not yet, if ever. Lottie Palliser had been badly hurt and that damage had made her draw her defenses so tight no one would ever come close to hurting her again. He understood that. He had been doing something similar since he was fifteen years old.

“You have an interesting concept of loyalty to your friends,” he said now.

“I have no concept of loyalty.” She sounded tired. “And it was not even worth it. He had a tiny penis and was only concerned for his own pleasure in bed.”

Ethan laughed. “How disappointing to lose a friend and gain so little in return.”

A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “That was the least of my betrayals. I deceived Joanna several times over.” She sighed. “Even so, I think she would have helped me, but she has been out of the country for over a year, in Scandinavia and Russia, or somewhere equally far-flung. I forget. I wrote to her but the letter probably went astray. Geography is not my strong suit.” She gave an irritable little shrug. “Must we speak of this?” He could feel her gaze resting on him. “There is no need for us to talk, is there, least of all about me?”

“Not if you do not wish.” Ethan was amused. For as long as he could remember he had had women desperate to tell him their life stories. He had been the one trying to escape the intimacy.

Lottie shifted on the seat and he caught a faint scent of her jasmine perfume, fresh and sweet. The hunger gripped him again, as razor-sharp as it had been in the brothel. It was a very long time since he had had a woman. As a prisoner of war he had had little opportunity to satisfy his lusts and had grown accustomed to ignoring them. Instead he had focused all his energies on the long, dangerous, treasonable game he was playing. Yet now it seemed that Lottie Palliser’s intriguing combination of reticence and experience was proving a great deal more seductive than he had ever imagined.

At first he had thought she was acting the prude to titillate the jaded palates of Mrs. Tong’s clientele. An experienced woman playing the virgin was not unusual, but in Lottie’s case it would have been pointless since everyone knew her history. And at no point had she attempted to deny her promiscuity or the infidelity that had led to her downfall. That honesty interested Ethan. Not a single woman of his acquaintance would have been as open as Lottie had been with him, and he admired her for that unflinching truthfulness.

She moved slightly on the hackney carriage seat and he heard the rustle of her silk skirts.

“How did you come to this?” she asked, turning his question back on him. “Since you seem so anxious to speak to me, you can tell me how you came to be a prisoner of war.”

“I was captured at the battle of Fuentes de Onoro in Portugal,” Ethan said. “When Wellington discovered who I was, he sent me back to England as a prisoner.”

“How careless of you to be caught.” Her voice was cool. “The British must have been delighted to lay hands on you when you have been a very public affront to your noble father for so many years. In fact—” her voice changed, became thoughtful “—I am surprised that they let you loose.”

“They kept me locked in a prison hulk at Chatham for a year.” Ethan spoke lightly, dismissively, even as he clenched his muscles with repudiation of every memory the words conjured, memories of the Black Hole, a prison a mere six-foot square at the bottom of the hold, with no light and barely any air. Men had been driven mad in there and begged to die. Men had been clapped in irons, half starved, flogged until they could not stand. He felt as though he could still smell the stench of the hulks, feel the filth on his skin beneath the fine lawn of his shirt and hear the cries of those who had run mad. He would never forget it.

“That must have been vile.” Lottie’s voice was soft, as though for all his apparent unconcern she could feel his hatred seeping through.

“It was.” He shut his mouth tightly.

“Why did you fight for the French?” He could feel her watching him in the darkness of the carriage. “Do you hate the British so much that their enemy is your friend?”

Ethan laughed. “I don’t hate the British. Why should I?”

There were about a hundred answers to that one but he was not going to supply them. Like her, he would always hold back to protect himself.

“Then are you a mercenary, no more than a soldier of fortune, taking the Emperor’s money?”

Lottie Palliser certainly knew how to provoke a man, Ethan thought ruefully. Perhaps silence would have been preferable after all.

“I am no mercenary soldier,” he said stiffly. “I fought for Napoleon because I have principles. I believe in what he is doing.”

“Principles.” Lottie said the word as though it were foreign to her. “How extraordinary.” He saw her smile. “Most men I know are unprincipled bastards. So you believe in—” she hesitated, “—liberty, fraternity and. the other one?”

“Equality,” Ethan said. “Yes, those are the beliefs of the revolution.”

“An odd sort of equality that sets one man up as an Emperor over the others,” Lottie said. “But then, I have never had much interest in politics so perhaps I am missing some crucial point. I fear that affairs of state bore me.” She yawned.

“Fortunately I have no desire to talk politics with you,” Ethan said. “I did not buy you for that.”

The air in the carriage cooled as though a breath of frost had blown through. Ethan saw that he had angered her with the blunt reminder of her situation. She still had plenty of pride. She turned her face away from him, her expression haughty. The carriage had slowed down at the meeting of two streets; it jerked forward and Lottie lost her balance, putting a hand out to steady herself against the door frame. As she moved, Ethan heard the unmistakable chink of coin, and expensive coin at that. Guineas. There could be only one place she had got those from. Their eyes met and in that moment he realized what she was about to do.

She was going to cheat him and run away.

Lottie had a hand on the door, already had it half-open with the noise and lamplight spilling in from the street outside the carriage. Ethan made a grab for her arm, felt the velvet of her cloak slip and slither between his fingers and caught her about the waist a second before she jumped.

“Not so fast.”

DAMN HIM. HE STILL sounded unperturbed. Was there nothing that could ruffle this man’s calm?

Lottie half sat, half lay across Ethan’s lap, breathing quickly and feeling as trapped and furious as a cornered cat. Ethan’s arm was as unyielding as a steel band about her waist. She shifted a little, trying to ease his grip, and immediately the bag of guineas she had stolen from him bumped heavily against his thigh. He slanted a look down at her. His lips turned up in a grim smile as he extracted the purse from the pocket of her cloak.

“I thought so. When did you lift that from me?” He sounded mildly interested, as though the pickpocket-ing habit of a society lady-turned-whore was a matter for careful consideration. Lottie felt her temper tighten further.

“I took it whilst you were negotiating with Mrs. Tong,” she snapped. “You weren’t paying attention to me.”

He nodded. “I underestimated you.”

He ran his hands over her in an impersonal search that felt oddly like a caress. Lottie trembled a little beneath his touch. She felt tense as a bow, frustrated, furious, to have been caught out, yet alive, aroused, and dangerously close to the edge.

“There aren’t any more,” she said. “I only had time to take the one.”

“And then you were going to run away from me.”

Lottie did not reply. She saw the cynical smile deepen on his lips.

“Where did you plan to go?” Ethan’s face was so close to hers that she could see the planes and hollows illuminated by the skipping lamplight. His expression was dark and unrevealing. Some men were easy to read, Lottie thought, easy to understand and even easier to manipulate. Ethan Ryder was not one of them.

“I have no notion,” she said. “I had not thought that far ahead.”

“So only the theft of my money was planned?”

Ethan’s voice was smooth but there was contempt beneath the surface. Well, she was not going to apologize. Perhaps it was wrong by conventional standards but she had moved so far beyond convention that she no longer cared.

“Yes,” she said. She met his eyes very directly. “I planned to rob you from the moment I saw all those lovely guineas.” To have a little money would have given her back a tiny measure of control and the chance of freedom, she thought. Fate had presented her with an opportunity to wrest back some power so she had tried to take it. The fact that she had almost succeeded was infuriating. She had come so close—and then she had failed.

“You were going to cheat me,” Ethan said. He grabbed her upper arms and held her still.

“Of course I was,” Lottie flashed. “You would be a fool to think I would do otherwise.” The anger bubbled up in her again. How many times had she been cheated, used and discarded? It had been her turn for a change.

“I thought we had an agreement,” Ethan said. She could feel tension in him, wound tight. The hands that held her were merciless. “Where is your loyalty?”

“I have already told you that I do not possess such a quality.”

“And now you have demonstrated it.” His tone was still level. “I do not think that you understand. As my mistress I expect you to be faithful to me, to show me a modicum of honesty and certainly not to try and rob me and run off.”

“Surely you did not trust me anyway?” Lottie said disdainfully.

“Naturally not.” He sounded dismissive. “But that does not mean I wished to be proved right.”

“And yet you are not even angry with me.” For some reason this enraged Lottie all the more, as though his refusal to be provoked meant that she had failed twice over.

“You mistake me,” Ethan said. “I am angry.” He raised a hand, eased back the hood of her cloak and tangled his fingers in her hair, bringing her face forward so that they were very close. She could feel the fury in him now, as elemental as fire. It was a shocking contrast when he kept his voice so steady.

“I don’t show my feelings very often,” he whispered. “You should bear that in mind if you wish to please me in the future.”

Lottie made an enraged sound. “Please you? I have no wish to please you! Surely you have realized that by now?”

“You are ungrateful.” He sounded amused. “I could have left you in that brothel servicing half of London.”

“Instead you bought me to service you!”

“I gave you a choice,” Ethan said. His words were cool but the undertone was fierce. “I told you I did not want an unwilling mistress. You did not have to come with me.”

“Then I would not have had any money, would I?” Lottie said, furiously.

There was a pause and then Ethan laughed. “I do believe,” he said pleasantly, “that you are even more mercenary than I suspected.”

He cupped her face between his hands and kissed her hard. Lottie could sense the heated anger but beneath that was an equally turbulent desire. It fed both her fury and her need. In the brothel she had known that he wanted her and yet he had chosen not to take her. His control had baffled her where another man would simply have indulged his lust. Now though, Ethan’s control was slipping, ignited by an anger she sensed went far deeper than mere annoyance at her deceit. She could feel a fury in him that was dark and ungovernable and went as deep as his soul. It was no wonder that normally he kept so tight a grip on it.

Ethan slid his tongue along her lower lip, delving into her mouth, plunging inside to taste and plunder. It made her head spin. Only an hour before she had felt desolation at what had become of her. Now that misery and frustration fused into an anger so great it met and matched his. He ravaged her mouth and she kissed him back as fiercely and as furiously as he took her.

She moved to straddle him on the seat of the carriage. She could feel the long hard ridge of his erection against her thigh and she pressed down on him and heard him groan.

“This is what you bought,” she said against his mouth. “See if you like it.” She bit him, not gently. He jerked back, swearing, then rolled her over on the seat so that she was beneath him now, her legs tangled in a waterfall of silk and lace petticoats, his weight holding her down. She lay panting, looking up at him. He was breathing as hard as she, and there was a dark, feral light in his eyes.

Ethan pushed the cloak off her shoulders and pulled down the bodice of her gown with a violent movement that almost ripped the flimsy material. He cupped one breast, taking her quickly into his mouth. Lottie squirmed. Desire flamed through her, shocking her with its heat and ferocity after so many months of cold, empty misery. She opened her body and her mind to its dark, demanding tide, her entire being burning up with anger and wild need.

Ethan bit down on her breast, more gently than she had bitten him, and she gasped as her body jolted with the mingled pain and pleasure of it. In response she tangled her fingers in his thick dark hair and pulled hard.

He swore again before returning his mouth to her breasts, covering them with tiny kisses that made her skin tighten and shiver, rosy pink from the torment of his lips, tongue and teeth. He slid one hand up her thigh and she reached for the band of his pantaloons, feverish to feel him inside her and put an end to this driving need for possession. It was fury and it was escape, but it was pleasure, too, as she felt the palm of his hand rough against the soft skin of her inner thigh and she arched, desperate to draw his touch to the very core of her.

The carriage jerked to a halt, almost throwing them off the seat. Ethan caught Lottie close in his arms to prevent her from falling, and for a second she stared up at him, seeing in his face the same welter of emotion there that she felt inside, the fury, the confusion and the need. Then his expression turned blank and she wondered if she had imagined that flash of feeling.

“Where are we?” Lottie said. She felt confused and adrift. The anger and desire were ebbing swiftly now and the cold desolation rushing back to fill all the empty corners of her soul.

“We are at Limmer’s Hotel,” Ethan said. “I stay here when I am in town.” He shifted, straightening, and Lottie sat up, smoothing down her gown with hands that shook slightly. Another minute, she thought, another second, and he would have been inside her. She had wanted it, wanted him, with so fierce a hunger it had stolen her breath. So why did she now feel so cheap and sad and worthless?

She drew the cloak about her tightly as though trying to drive out the cold.

“Limmer’s?” she said. “How very disreputable.”

She saw Ethan smile. “How very appropriate.”

He swung open the door of the hackney carriage and jumped down, threw some coins and a word of thanks to the coachman and turned to help Lottie down the steps. As she moved toward the doorway of the hotel he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“A moment,” he said softly. He looked her over, straightening the cloak with a gesture she found oddly touching, pulling the hood up over her disordered hair. His hand touched her cheek in a brief caress. She could not be sure whether it was accident or design but it sent a quiver of sensation right through her body. She searched his face for another glimpse of that elusive emotion she was sure she had seen before but there was no sign of it.

“That was not bad,” Ethan said. He spoke lightly, mockingly. “Perhaps I shall get my money’s worth after all.”

And in that moment Lottie knew never to expect tenderness from Ethan Ryder. She berated herself for seeking it, hoping for it. This was about sex and money, nothing more. That was the cornerstone of her new life. And she had best not forget it.

CHAPTER FOUR

ETHAN WONDERED if he was destined to spend the rest of the evening and very possibly the foreseeable future feeling angry; angry with Lottie, angry with himself and angry with the two of them in combination. It seemed more than likely.

He had been absolutely furious to discover that Lottie had attempted to steal and run away from him. Such treachery should have amused him, bearing out as it did his assessment that she had no integrity. But instead of amusement he had been possessed by a red-hot rage that had been as inexplicable as it had been out of character. It had been sufficient to make him lose control, to want to possess Lottie with an angry desire that had been fueled by her equally uninhibited response. He was a man who never lost control, least of all with a woman, and this had been unprecedented. Choosing a mistress, sleeping with her, should have been the simple part of his plan. Instead it was mysteriously turning into the most complicated aspect.

And now he was furious for an entirely different reason. The fierce lovemaking with Lottie, which had almost reached its culmination in a hackney carriage of all places, had left him feeling shaken and disturbed. Neither were reactions that he associated with making love to a woman. He was not accustomed to being at the mercy of his own passion and he did not care for the feeling. The unwelcome emotion had been enough to make him want to put some distance between them.

Lottie had not replied to him but had swept ahead of him through the doorway and into the dingy interior of Limmer’s Hotel. She carried herself with dignity and Ethan was forcibly reminded of the fact that no matter her current ruin and disgrace, Lottie Palliser was descended from a very old and aristocratic family indeed.

He followed her inside. Lottie’s arrival was causing considerable interest in the dark and dirty entrance hall. Several sporting gentlemen—for Limmer’s was known as a haunt of the hunting squirearchy—were ogling her and even the pale desk clerk had a gleam of excitement in his eyes. Lottie was looking about her with haughty disdain. Ethan was startled to realize that in her velvet cloak with her hair peeping from beneath the hood and her face bare of cosmetics she looked more like a young ingenue than the veteran of many scandalous love affairs.

As he watched, a slim gentleman in the buff breeches and navy coat that was the uniform of the 1st regiment of Napoleon’s Carabiniers stepped forward to bow to Lottie with languid elegance.

“Enchanté, madame,” he said. “Colonel Jacques Le Prevost at your service.” Turning to Ethan he raised his fair brows expressively and continued in French: “My God, St. Severin, I thought you were visiting Madame Tong’s Temple of Venus to find your mistress, not Almack’s Assembly Rooms!”

Before Ethan could respond, Lottie had smiled prettily at Le Prevost and replied, in perfect French. “You mistake, monsieur, I am fresh from the whorehouse not the schoolroom.”

Le Prevost choked. “Madame!” He recovered himself and his hazel eyes lit with appreciative laughter. “All that, a sense of humor and perfect French, too? You are a fortunate man, St. Severin.” His gaze narrowed speculatively on Lottie. “Perhaps Wantage will not prove so tedious a posting after all.”

“You will have to make your own entertainment,” Ethan said, taking Lottie’s arm. “Jacques was previously on parole in Reading,” he murmured to her. “It is where all the richest and most influential French officers are sent and the society there is good. He is less than impressed to be sent to Wantage’s rural backwater.”

“I am becoming more resigned to my fate by the moment,” Le Prevost said, slapping Ethan on the back. “You had best take your English rose away, my friend, before her jealous countrymen snatch her back.” He made another elegant bow to Lottie. “Your servant, madame. I shall look forward to knowing you better.”

“I did not realize that you spoke such good French,” Ethan said, as he and Lottie turned the stair. “Were you a studious child?”

“That seems unlikely, doesn’t it,” Lottie said. “No, I was no bluestocking. In fact my governess, Miss Snook, despaired of me. But my grandmother was French and my mother spoke to us a great deal in that language so I learned almost despite myself.”

“Us?”

“My brother, Theo, and I.” Lottie hesitated and Ethan saw a shadow touch her eyes. “He is … away.”

Ethan took a guess. “Fighting the French?”

He saw her mouth turn down at the corners. “Yes. I have not heard from him in months. I am not sure.” Her voice trailed away and he knew what she meant.