Lord of Sin (12 page)

Her hair had come partly undone, ginger strands flowing around her face. Her posture was as bold as it had been in the house, but there was a vulnerability in her face that momentarily caused him to hesitate in his attack.

“How dare you come here,” he said softly.

Her breast rose as she drew in a breath. “How dare
you
take Melbyrne away?”

They stared at each other. Sinjin’s cock, which had relaxed during the ride, was at full attention again, and he despised his loss of control.

Flames curled around her like a lover’s fingers….

“Since you are here,” he said harshly, “would you care to see Giles’s grave?”

Her cheeks turned paper white. She closed her eyes and took a half step sideways, as if she might fall. Sinjin closed the gap between them and caught her arm. Fire licked at his palm.

“Sit,” he commanded, throwing his riding coat on the ground. She was stubborn; she didn’t give way until he compelled her.

He released her arm as soon as he could safely do so. An apology hovered on his tongue, but he swallowed it. He owed her no such consideration. Yet he knew by her trembling that she did had not come to Donbridge without great trepidation, for all her boldness. She did not wish to be here at all.

“It won’t work,” he said, setting a careful distance between them again.

She seemed to recover a little, the color slowly seeping back into her cheeks. “Are you so certain that your scheme will?”

“I have no scheme.”

“You stole Mr. Melbyrne away just to keep him from spending time with Lady Orwell.”

There would have been no purpose in denial even if he had felt inclined to offer one. “I did as I thought best.”

“Then you do believe I am a liar.”

“I believe you will do whatever you can to encourage Lady Orwell.”

The mist-gray eyes held his, warming with anger. “It was as I told you. I did not and will not use magic in this matter.”

“Perhaps you can’t help yourself.”

She gathered her feet beneath her and tried to stand, her legs becoming tangled in her skirts. It was more than habit to assist her, to take her arm again and let her lean upon it until she was on her feet.

This time she was the one to shake him off. “I am in perfect command of myself,” she said. “But I will not allow you to hurt Deborah by manipulating Felix to satisfy your own need to hurt me.” She searched his eyes. “Can you deny that that is your true motive, Lord Donnington? Or is it indeed a matter of power over those weaker than yourself? It is either one or the other, for you certainly do not have Mr. Melbyrne’s best interests at heart.”

Her words should have been no more than the
bites of midges, minor irritations at best, and yet they burned like a hornet’s sting. “You know nothing of Melbyrne’s best interests,” he snapped.

“I know more than a man who refuses to see what is before him…or chooses to ignore it entirely.”

The danger was very evident to Sinjin then. If he let Nuala win even the tiniest of victories now, she would see his weakness and go in for the kill. Melbyrne would be lost to her machinations, and he…

Open thighs and outstretched arms. Devil’s curses hidden behind smiling lips. A woman’s fair shape concealing corruption that could suck a man’s soul into Hell.

“I see what is before me,” he said, half-blinded by the visions of terror and lust. “Get thee gone, witch!”

She flinched, her mouth opening on a gasp of shock. He touched his own throat as if he might catch the words and destroy them before they could be spoken.

For they had not been his words. The voice had not been his voice. It was the one from the dream, harsh and full of rage. Of hate.

Sinjin pushed his palms into his forehead. Sparks and streaks of red danced behind his eyelids.

“Is that how it is to be?”

So soft, her voice. So steady, as if she hadn’t glimpsed what smoldered within his heart.

He opened his eyes. Though nothing in her appearance had changed, he could feel the armor she had wrapped around herself. For all the bitter words between them, these had been different. Deadly in some way he couldn’t comprehend.

What the hell had come over him?

“Is it a war you want?” she asked in that same, almost gentle voice. “I would never have chosen it, Sinjin. I had hoped for your forgiveness, as I had hoped one day to forgive myself. But I see that is impossible.” Her modest height seemed to grow, until she stood as nearly as tall as Sinjin himself. “By what rules shall we abide? How shall we decide the winner?”

As if it were all a game to her. As if the lives she’d trifled with were merely pawns on a chessboard.

“War,” he said, though his throat still rasped with the acid of that other voice. “You will lose, Nuala.”

“Perhaps. But I will do so knowing that I have done all I can to stop a blackguard who’d rather see his friend destroyed than let him fall in love.”

W
ITHOUT A THOUGHT
, without so much as a breath of hesitation, Sinjin strode to her and grabbed her arms. She had no chance to struggle. He brought his mouth down on hers without any concession to gentleness, and felt her lips part on a cry she never made.

Heaven. And Hell. Both all at once, the feel of her in his arms and the desire that ate at him from within. He backed her up against a small oak, spearing his fingers through her hair until it came undone and splashed around her shoulders.

Not once did she fight him. He was so lost that he didn’t care what she thought or what she wanted. He simply took, and if her mouth softened under his for a fraction of a second, it was unyielding again by the time he came back to himself.

He released her and staggered away. She remained where she was, her back against the tree and her arms still at her sides. His vision cleared enough to see that she had tears in her eyes.

Tears he’d put there with his savagery. Never in his life had he taken something a woman wasn’t willing to give. He had launched the first attack in the
war, abusing her with his greater strength and contemptible lack of self-control.

“Nuala,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean—”

But she was already striding away. He didn’t follow to beg forgiveness. She wouldn’t want to hear it, even if he were capable of speech.

He never learned how she’d managed to mount her horse without assistance. When he found Shaitan, she was gone. He sat in the saddle, his fists gripping the reins, and fought to regain his composure before the others could guess how badly he’d betrayed his own principles.

The sound of muffled hoofbeats roused him from his dark thoughts. His heart gave a jagged lurch, and he turned Shaitan to meet the rider.

Melbyrne drew his mount to a stop and stared at Sinjin, his mouth drawn down in a rare frown.

“I saw Lady Charles,” he said. “What have you done, Sin?”

“Melbyrne, it isn’t what you—”

The boy pulled on the reins and spun the bay around, tearing off toward the house at a gallop. Sinjin hesitated a few moments longer and followed. He reached Donbridge after the others had already left their horses with the stable hands. A brief inquiry at the carriage house assured him that Lady Charles had abandoned the premises.

When Sinjin entered the house, the men were still in their rooms changing for dinner. Felix was nowhere to be found.

“Melbyrne?” Ferrer said as he met Sinjin at the foot of the staircase. “Haven’t seen him since we got back. Why? Have you lost him?”

The man’s tone grated on Sinjin. “I am not his keeper,” he snapped.

“He needs one, if what I hear is true. And you, Donnington…what goes on between you and that toothsome little piece Lady Charles?” His lips curled in a sneer. “You were gone off together a rather long time.”

“Nothing happened, Ferrer.”

“Pity. I would have been happy to keep the lady company. Nothing like a fast ride on an eager filly to—”

He gave a grunt of surprise as Sinjin’s punch connected with his jaw and he sailed to the floor. Sinjin rubbed his knuckles, wishing that Ferrer would get up and offer him another chance.

“I say, what’s all this?” Reddick said from the top of the stairs.

Mrs. Tissier joined him, and soon all the Forties were crowded at the landing. Ferrer picked himself up, the sneer replaced with a look of angry calculation. He felt his jaw and smeared the blood on his lower lip.

“Well, well,” he said. “How very gallant of you to defend the lady’s honor.”

Sinjin flexed his fingers. “You won’t speak of her again, Ferrer.”

“Shall I assume that Adele is now at liberty?”

He flinched a little as Sinjin offered a view of his fist. “You may assume that I will be prepared to continue our conversation at any time you choose,” Sinjin said.

Ferrer barked a laugh. “Listen to him, chaps. When may we expect the happy event, Donnington?”

The fire in Sinjin’s dreams was no hotter than his face. “I would not advise that you wait for it at Donbridge,” he said.

“Then I shall be going,” Ferrer said, brushing off his trousers. He glared up at the others and charged up the stairs.

“One more thing,” Sinjin called after him. “I should be very sorry to hear that you have spread scurrilous rumors about Lady Charles’s visit to Donbridge.”

Ferrer paused, his hand gripping the banister. “They would hardly be rumors.”

“It would be unwise to mention it, nevertheless.”

Ferrer’s gaze swept the observers on the landing. “Don’t make the mistake of blaming me if such tattle spreads,” he said. “I have no control over the behavior of your new conquest.” He pushed his way past the Forties and strode out of sight.

Mrs. Tissier and the men were silent, waiting for Sinjin’s next move…a general warning to all of them, perhaps, or a blustered explanation.

Sinjin gave them neither. “Shall we go in to dinner, Mrs. Tissier? Gentlemen?”

Glances were exchanged, and someone coughed. No one offered a single comment as Sinjin gave Mrs. Tissier his arm and the Forties proceeded into the dining room.

The mood gradually relaxed, and conversation settled into the somewhat ribald tone typical of the club’s gatherings. Mrs. Tissier was as active in the ex
changes as any of the men, though she occasionally glanced toward the door as if she wondered where Melbyrne had gone. Ferrer left without fanfare, his departure briefly noted by Hedley as the dessert course was served.

Mrs. Tissier retired early, and the others gathered in the billiard room for a game and cigars. No one found the nerve to question Sinjin further about his row with Ferrer or Melbyrne’s absence. Sinjin put off going to bed as long as possible, keeping the men engaged until, one by one, they staggered up to their chambers.

Sinjin had already sent his valet to his own bed, and was grateful for the solitude as he undressed. He was just inebriated enough to feel the weight of unfamiliar self-pity.

He had told Nuala that she must lose any war between them. But he knew those words to be no more than a child’s whistling in the dark. He was already well along the road to losing the battle all on his own.

She had some strange power over him. He saw that now. It wasn’t merely her body, her intelligence or her spirit that drew him. She had cast a spell on him, even if she didn’t know it herself.

Fool
. She’d done nothing of the kind. It was the kiss that had clinched it, no mystical enchantment.

He climbed into bed, aware of every inch of naked skin against the sheets. He could almost feel Nuala lying beside him, touching him with her fiery hands. Whispering promises of ecstasies no woman had ever given him before. He was so hard that one brush of a woman’s fingertips would make him come.

Adele. Tomorrow he would go to her and take his fill of her, even if he had to remain in her bed for three days running. If that didn’t cure him, nothing would.

But the voice returned in his dreams.
You will never be free of her
. And the flames licked over his body until nothing was left of him but ash.

“S
HE IS NOT COMING
,” Frances said, consulting her watch again. “I suggest that we proceed without her. This is, after all, the opening day of our new charity house.”

Deborah nodded, though she cast one last glance up the street as she climbed into Lady Selfridge’s carriage. It had all been very strange. Nuala had suddenly dashed off to God-knew-where two days ago, leaving only a vague note by way of explanation, and had as yet failed to return. She had known that today was the day that they would officially open the new warehouse in Whitechapel, and had expressed continuing enthusiasm for the project.

But she hadn’t come. Deborah was certain in her heart that Nuala’s absence had something to do with her exchange with Lord Donnington at Lady Oxenham’s ball. More, she knew that Nuala had been furious at Lord Donnington’s whisking Felix away from the ball. Nuala had been less than subtle about her hopes that Deborah and Mr. Melbyrne’s acquaintance would evolve into a more permanent connection.

No, Nuala’s absence was surely no coincidence. And neither Felix nor Lord Donnington had made
a public appearance since the ball…not in Hyde Park nor anywhere Deborah might have been apt to see them.

Deborah gnawed on her lower lip and sank back in the seat. If she could but make up her own mind about Felix. He had not yet proposed, but she was increasingly convinced that such a proposal would soon be forthcoming. Nuala certainly wanted to see it happen, but what would the other Widows say? Her confusion only seemed to grow worse by the minute.

Worrying at a ribbon on her dress with nervous fingers, Deborah closed her eyes as another face rose in her mind’s eye. Dark hair and a straightforward gaze. An earnest, serious face, so unlike Felix’s pleasant handsomeness.

Today she might see Ioan Davies. He lived in Whitechapel. He had become involved with the charity project when he’d confronted Bray, and he might feel bound to lend his protection again. He was that sort of man.

And he had returned her handkerchief.

That means nothing but that he is a courteous young man, in spite of his situation and station
. There could be no significance in their meeting again.

The drive to Whitechapel was completed almost before Deborah had realized the carriage was moving. Most of the carts had already arrived and were being unloaded; a rapidly growing crowd was forming around them, jostling people of all ages eager to be given their rations. While Clara, Maggie and the few other society women Frances had recruited
wrapped up the food, the men Frances had hired as guards kept a watchful eye out for those who might attempt to claim more than their due. The guards themselves had been found in Whitechapel and were willing enough to do the work for a generous wage, though Lady Selfridge had insisted that their cudgels be used only as a last resort, and only against men who used violence to bully or impede their fellows.

To Deborah’s secret surprise, the distribution went smoothly. The small warehouse Frances had acquired was much more suited to organizing the apportionment of rations; only a few could enter the door at one time, and the more needy women and children could be kept apart from the men. Bray never put in an appearance.

Nor did Ioan Davies. Deborah found herself watching for him even as she wrapped fresh food in newspapers and passed it to grateful women, or laughed with little girls as they received their rag dolls.

“What is it, Deborah?” asked Frances during one of their rare intervals of rest. “You seem distracted.”

“Not at all,” Deborah assured her with a smile, and returned to work with renewed vigor. But when she caught a glimpse of black hair at the rear of the thinning crowd, her heart rolled over in her chest. She stood, murmured a request that Clara take her place for a few minutes, and made her way through the men and women clustered by the warehouse doors.

No one impeded her, but Ioan had disappeared.
She stood in the filthy street, clutching her hands together as she examined every figure who passed.

I must see him
. It was a foolish idea in the extreme, but she knew if she did not, she would continue to think about him at the most inopportune moments, and in the most inappropriate ways. For some reason she could not comprehend, she had built up some sort of romantic fantasy about him that must be dispelled.

Hesitantly she walked a little distance away from the warehouse. The decrepit houses seemed to lean toward her, whispering of the suffering and poverty they contained. The stench of fetid alleys clogged her nostrils. The very sky seemed to grow darker, but she continued on, trying to forget the tales of the Whitechapel killer.

She had gone perhaps two blocks when she saw the dark-haired figure rounding a corner.

Resolutely she set off again. A woman in a gaudy, cast-off gown, leaning against a peeling wall, shouted an obscenity as Deborah passed. A pair of men emerging from a tavern paused to follow her progress with narrowed eyes. She walked a little faster, her skirts sweeping through the rubbish that littered the pavement.

The corner was just ahead. She dashed around it and collided with a man stinking of old sweat and strong drink.

“Well, if i’ ain’t the li’l tart from Mayfair,” he said, gripping her arm before she could back away. “Fancy findin’ yer ’ere.” He leaned into her, nauseating her with his breath. “Slummin’, are we?”

Deborah struggled, clenching her fist against the need to strike. “I would advise you to release me,” she said with her best attempt at cool disdain.

He laughed. “Jus’ loik yer ma. Aw high ’n’ migh’y, as if she ’ad th’ roight.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “My mother?”

“You ’eard me.” He smiled, giving her another view of his rotten teeth. “I were wonderin’ wot i’ was wot were so familiar ’bout yer.”

“Let me go.”

“But we ain’t done wi’ our conversation, missy. Yer do want ter know abou’ yer real ma? Wot she did fer ’er keep afore she gave yer away?”

The filthy words coming out of his mouth erased any traces of Deborah’s fear. “You never knew my mother,” she said. “She would never have had anything to do with a man like you.”

“That so?” He fumbled inside his wretched coat with his free hand, grunted, and withdrew a soiled and creased bit of paper. “Then why’d she gif me this?”

The bit of paper was a photograph, so stained that Deborah could not make it out at first. She drew back, but Bray thrust the photograph into her hand.

The face was darkened by time, the right half of the lower jaw obscured by a smear of dirt or grease. But there was no mistaking the woman’s beauty: the fullness of her lips, the softness of her eyes beneath gentle brows or the thick, dark hair arranged simply on her head.

“I weren’t wrong,” Bray growled. “I see i’ in yer eyes.”

Deborah turned her head away, afraid she would vomit. The woman might have been her twin save for the stark simplicity of her dress.