Sinful (Hot Regency Romance Novella) (4 page)

He groaned, then embraced Laura and planted a
kiss on the top of her midnight-black curls. “You know I wasn’t
doing that.”

He had a bride. He had made a vow to Sally
Thomas. It still stood, in his mind, legal or not. Whether either
of them wanted it or not.

“Good.” Laura nodded. She was no longer frail
and sickly, but healthy and strong. That was why he couldn’t bring
himself to seriously chastise her when she didn’t behave exactly
like a proper young lady. Even though Mrs. Fennings had insisted
that Laura must quell her natural high spirits.

Mrs. Fennings, widow of an earl’s brother and
a haughty martinet, had been employed to oversee his sister’s
come-out. The woman could bring a man to his knees with her glare.
Lyan had often wondered about trying to convince her to partner
with him in the pursuit of criminals.

Laura laid her hand on his arm, her eyes
dancing. “I have an appointment there tomorrow for a ball gown. I
should hate to think the door was barred to me because my brother
was trying to see ladies in their corsets.”

He felt his brow arch higher, but the irony
of it struck him. In the course of his work, he often questioned
madams and prostitutes. He’d seen more ladies in corsets—and out of
them—than he could count. Not one of them had ever haunted him like
Sally. “You are going to Madame Desjardins’ shop?”

“Mrs. Fennings says I must, now that you are
to be an earl. But I hate all the dull fittings. I’d much rather
stay at home and read a book.” She assessed him quizzically. “Has
Madame Desjardins committed some kind of crime?”

Did breaking his heart a long time ago count
as a crime? He sighed. “I don’t yet know.” Laura knew a little
about Lady Maryanne’s disappearance. Since she was a similar age to
the missing girl, he’d wanted to know Laura’s thoughts, hoping they
would give him insight into Lady Maryanne. “It is the last place
Lady Maryanne is thought to have gone.”

“But she wasn’t in Gretna Green?”

“No. You sound surprised.”

“It’s just—”

He put her arm around her. “Tell me, Laura.”
He didn’t need to say more. She understood his fears for Lady
Maryanne’s safety.

“I heard that Madame Desjardins helps girls
who want to elope.”

“Helps them? How, Laura?”

Her eyes were wide. Even through the hardship
of poverty, even though he dealt with the criminal world, he had
fought to keep Laura innocent.

“I don’t know, Lyan. These are just rumors
I’ve heard from other girls. I think she lends them money. Most
have no access to their own money, of course. I also heard that she
investigates the gentlemen these ladies want to marry, to ensure
they are not just fortune hunters, gamesters, or rakes. She stopped
one young woman from marrying a man who was pretending to be a
Scottish earl’s son. He was actually a draper’s lad.”

Interesting that Sally helped girls who
planned to run away with a man, when she had run away from one. He
gave his sister a hug. “Thank you, angel.” Then the instincts that
had saved his life countless times went on alert. How did Laura
know so much about this? “You aren’t planning to use any services
of Madame Desjardins beyond her dressmaking skills, are you?”

“Do you mean—do I want to elope?” Her laugh
was silvery and sweet. “Of course not. I simply want a dress.
Anyway, no man would ever dare run away with the sister of the
famously ruthless Mr. Foxton.”

Lyan scratched his jaw. He was afraid her
answer had come too quickly and with too much light-hearted
laughter. “Laura—”

“Mrs. Fennings is going to introduce me to
other earls. I have no intention of running off with anyone.”

Her answer was natural, guileless. But the
gentle ease with which she gave it only made him worry more. Laura
had bluestocking tendencies, along with pronounced opinions, and
she liked to debate with him. For her to reassure him…it made him
nervous. He searched her large green eyes. “My dear, it doesn’t
matter if you have the intention—I will ensure you never have the
chance.”

Laura stuck out her tongue at him. “Lyan, you
are being ridiculous. Where would I have ever met an inappropriate
man?”

He wanted to believe that was true. Tonight,
he had two reasons to visit Madame Desjardins. He would question
her again about Lady Maryanne. And he would warn her what would
happen if she tried to put foolish ideas about elopements into his
sister’s head.

There was no way in Hades he would let Sally
Thomas betray him twice.

* * *

“Are you certain this is what you wish to do?
You do realize how much you will give up by marrying this man
against your brother’s wishes?” In a soft voice, to the young woman
who sat opposite her, Estelle listed what those risks could be.
Estrangement from family. Loss of any hope of a dowry or marriage
settlement. The discovery that love was not enough to conquer
everything, after all. “There is nothing like poverty to sour a
marriage. It may turn your charming suitor into a bitter, brutal
husband.”

Estelle watched the girl nod solemnly.

Her visitor had a hood pulled down to cover
her dark curls and shroud her face. She had insisted all candles be
extinguished. It was nighttime. Only the light from the coals in
the grate illuminated her. “I know. I’ve thought of those things.
But my—my brother has received news he will inherit a title. I know
he thinks he wants the best for me, but I don’t want to make my
choice from amongst viscounts and earls. I know which man I want to
marry. But my beloved is a Bow Street Runner and I know the match
will be refused.”

“Give me his name. Before I can help, I have
to ensure he is not a rogue, criminal, or rake.”

The girl shook her head. “It’s not necessary.
I know everything about him. He’s worked with my brother for years.
He’s a hero! He has rescued kidnapped children and stopped criminal
gangs.”

“His name?”

“I can’t. You could go to my brother.”

“My dear, I would never betray you. But if
you wish for my help, you must tell me.”

But the young woman swept to her feet. “No. I
will do this alone, then.” She spun on her heel and ran for the
door of the shop, shoving the stool she had been sitting on across
the path between the worktables. Estelle jumped up. Her scissors
fell from her lap to clatter on the floor. Her patterns were
whirling in the air, blown off the tables as the girl had raced by.
She clambered over the stool and rushed after the girl, but as she
reached the front of the salon, the door snapped shut in her face
and the bell tinkled madly. She snatched open the door and ran out
into the street.

The girl had disappeared.

On a sigh, Estelle went back into her shop,
back to the workroom. Moonlight slanted in through the narrow
windows. Her dress patterns lay all over the floor, battered and
bent. She’d torn one as she’d run over it. If she did not finish
them, she would not have the St. Ives gown completed. Or the two
dresses required by the twins of the Earl of Roydon for their
come-out ball.

To disappoint clients was to embrace the end
of her business. It would mean her fall back into poverty again,
and this time she would drag her daughter down with her.

She couldn’t.

But there could be only one young lady in
England whose brother had just learned he was heir to a peer, and
who might know enough about Bow Street Runners to fall in love with
one.

Lyan had had a sister. Her name had been
Laura.

Estelle had never once betrayed the
confidence of any girl who had come to her seeking help for her
elopement. And the young ladies, to her surprise, had kept her
secret. Her role in their marriages was shared by word of mouth,
and just to those girls in the same predicament.

She had helped girls who had a real reason to
flee—girls for whom a marriage that would ostracize them from their
families was a lesser evil than staying at home.

Did Laura have reason to flee her brother?
Why did she believe her brother would never let her marry for love?
Was it because he knew what it was like to be betrayed?

Estelle paced in her workroom. Was it just
because Lyan wanted his sister to move up in the world that he
would refuse the match? Some Bow Street Runners were known to be
motivated more by rewards than by justice, and some were considered
to be as unsavory as the men they hunted. That was the very reason
Lyan had fascinated all of London. He might have a rakish
reputation, but he had always been moral and just.

It would break his heart if Laura ran away
into a terrible marriage.

Could she betray him again, break his heart
again, by keeping Laura’s secret?

* * *

Two hours later she was still at work, when a
soft creak sounded overhead, directly above the back of the
workroom. Estelle froze for an instant, her fingers crumpling the
paper pattern she was pinning. She cocked her head to listen,
though it was almost impossible to hear over her pounding heart. It
might be nothing—just Rose out of bed or her exhausted mind playing
tricks—but she couldn’t be sure.

She put down the piece of fragile paper,
picked up her scissors, and crept upstairs. The door to Rose’s room
was ajar, just as she had left it. It wasn’t her daughter—

A hand clamped over her mouth and dragged her
into another room—her bedroom. Her shoulders were held back against
something unmovable.

Estelle knew what it had to be. A male chest.
Panic rose like a wave and she struggled against the arm that was
clamped around her torso like an iron bracket.

“Easy, my dear. I won’t hurt you.”

I won’t hurt you.
He’d said those
words. Lord Cavell. When he’d tried to assault her here, in her own
bedroom, while Rose slept innocently in the next room. He’d held a
blade to her throat to make her stop fighting and had warned her
not to make a sound. In a sneering, evil voice, he’d warned her she
would not want to wake her daughter. He’d promised he would not
hurt her, or Rose, if she
behaved
—which meant if she did
every foul thing he wanted her to do.

All those years she’d spent in the stews had
not been for nothing. She’d known he didn’t intend to leave
witnesses afterward, whether she obeyed him or not. So she had
fought for her life. Rose had come in, only eight years of age, and
had slammed a frying pan over his head.

Now Estelle kicked and struggled just as
furiously. She had her scissors in her hand—

A strong hand pulled them out of her grip. “I
wouldn’t like those stabbed into my privates, thank you.”

Lyan.
He turned her to face him. “You
wretch!” she spat. “You terrified me. You could have woken up Rose.
She went through this before and it almost frightened her to death.
I—”

“What do you mean, she went through this
before?” His voice was like ice, his eyes glittering as hard as
emeralds.

When she didn’t answer, he kissed her. Just
like that. His mouth devoured hers. All her fear and rage tumbled
around inside her but, even as furious as she was with him, she
grew hot. Scorching hot. So much so, she feared her simple work
dress would melt to her skin.

“Tell me, or I won’t stop there.” Then he
grimaced at his words, and he brushed his hand over her cheek. “No,
no threats. Threatening you with kisses won’t work any more, will
it? Because you’ve known worse. Tell me what happened, Sal. I’ll
kill anyone who hurt you or your daughter.”

Through the heat rising inside her, a heat
that fogged her mind like steam upon glass, she remembered the
painful truth. She had abandoned him in a panic ten years before.
Earlier, she’d discovered he hadn’t forgotten, and he certainly
hadn’t forgiven. Why should he care about her now? She had put her
security above all else, and the simple fact he still gave a damn
made her throat constrict. “Well, then,” she managed to say, “that
is exactly the reason I can’t tell you.”

His hands traced the simple neckline of her
dress. Her breasts seemed to swell and tingle under her shift as
his fingertips skimmed over them. Her nipples hardened as though
begging for his caress. Then, shock of all shocks, he cupped her
bosom with both hands.

“I want all your secrets, Sally. Every last
one.” He breathed the words against her ear. The fire he’d ignited
inside her consumed another piece of the wall around her soul. Just
this, his hands on her breasts, his mouth nuzzling her neck, could
leave her utterly defenseless.

No. She would be like her mother, then.
Vulnerable. What was a woman in the throes of passion but a woman
waiting to be destroyed?

She couldn’t surrender anything to Lyan, not
one little piece of her—and definitely not her heart—when she knew
she could never hope to claim his love in return.

“You know who Lady Maryanne ran away with,”
he murmured, his breath sinfully hot against her ear. Just the
brush of it along her earlobe made her quiver.

She had been unwilling to use these weapons
against him. Apparently, he had no such scruples. And, try as she
might, she couldn’t will the ice back into her body.

“This afternoon, I interviewed families of
young ladies who have been your customers,” he continued, in his
rich, deep, sensual voice. “Four of them ran away to Gretna Green
with men.”

“Those marriages are all successes,” she said
tartly. She tried to pull away but he held her too tightly.

His tongue ran up and down her throat. Her
mind was becoming as mushy as porridge. “S—stop.”

“I will if you give me a name. A man’s name.”
His grip changed and he stopped kissing her. He faced her, his eyes
bright and hard with determination. “I fear Cavell arranged for
Maryanne to disappear. He found out about her plans to elope, and
he had her killed so he would not lose control of her money. By the
will, he gets it all if she dies without a husband or
children.”