Simply Sinful (17 page)

“And an obliging friend with a title.”

“Peter…” Val got to his feet. “I hate to interrupt, Mr. Cole, but I have more to discuss with Mr. Howard. Perhaps you could continue this conversation later?”

Mr. Cole stood too. “Of course, my lord. I’ll be in the main office if you need me.” He held out his hand to Peter, who shook it. “It was a pleasure to finally meet you, sir. I hope to see you again soon.”

“The pleasure was all mine, Mr. Cole. You have allowed me to glimpse a part of my life that I thought I had lost forever.”

He watched Mr. Cole nod to Valentine and head for the door.

“Mr. Cole?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Was my mother accompanied by anyone?”

“Not that I know of, sir. She came to our offices by herself.”

“Thank you, again.”

Mr. Cole shut the door firmly behind him, leaving Peter staring at Valentin. He took a deep breath.

“Do you have that address?”

“Of course.” Val handed Peter a piece of paper. He rapidly scanned Val’s distinctive script.

“My mother lived in a vicarage?”

“Apparently so.” Valentin smiled. “In truth, I have another reason for my hasty summons.”

Peter straightened, the slip of paper crushed in his fingers. “What the hell have you done, Val?”

“I took it upon myself to communicate with your family.”

Peter braced his fingers on the desk to steady himself. “
You took it upon yourself
. Do you imagine I am too stupid to do this?”

Valentin frowned. “Of course not. I just wanted to help.”

“Why, Val?”

“Because you are my friend.” Valentin pushed away from the desk and began to pace the small room. “Because I suspected that left to your own devices you would probably do nothing with this information.”

“Are you afraid that I intend to leech on you for the rest of my life?”

“Of course not!”

“But you have taken away my choice in the matter.”

“Christ, Peter, I’ve found your family for you!”

“Because you still feel guilty about denying me yours?”

Val went still, his eyes blazing with anger. “How dare you suggest that I’m so mean-spirited and selfish that I interfere in your life purely for my benefit?”

“Why not? You’ve always taken what you wanted from me and ignored the rest.”

Val took another turn around the room until he came back to stand in front of Peter. His mouth was set in a hard, hostile line. “I understand that you are upset about this news so I am willing to forgive your slurs on my character.”

“That’s very big of you, Val. Now tell me the rest. There is more, isn’t there, or else you wouldn’t be feeling so bloody guilty.”

Val looked back at the papers on his desk. “I had a reply from a gentleman called William Howard. He is the current rector of Farlington Church in North Yorkshire.”

“You had a reply?” Peter sat down suddenly.

“This gentleman, who may be your maternal grandfather, will be in London for the next few days. He is staying at Grillon’s Hotel. I suggest you go and see him.”

Peter stared at his boots, noted the specks of mud that now dulled their gleaming blackness, wondered how Adams ever got them to shine so well. He flinched as Valentin hunkered down in front of him.

“I know that this is a shock, and I apologize if you feel I have overstepped the boundaries of our friendship.” Peter shuddered as Val put his hand on his knee. “But, Peter, for your own sake, please make the effort to see this man, even if it is just for a moment. You will never forgive yourself if you let this chance slip through your fingertips.”

Peter stared at Valentin’s hand. His friend rarely touched him voluntarily these days.

He wanted to weep.

He needed to leave.

“Thank you for the information.” He got up so abruptly he knocked Valentin to the floor. “I need to think.”

It took all his concentration to maintain a calm façade as he headed for the door. Val got slowly to his feet and remained by his desk, his expression troubled.

“Peter…”

“I’ll be in touch, Val.”

Valentin sighed. “Christ, Peter, why do you have to make this so hard? Do you wish to have dinner with us tonight? I’m sure you can think up some excuse to explain to Sara why you didn’t choose to stay with us for the first time ever.”

“I’m not traveling alone.”

He thought of Abigail waiting impatiently for him at the hotel. God, he wanted to lay his head in her lap and let her stroke his hair until he fell asleep.

“You are with someone?”

The sudden harshness in Val’s voice brought Peter’s attention back to his friend. “That’s usually what not being alone implies, Val. So don’t worry about me.”

Valentin’s hand dropped to his side.

“Then good night.”

“Good night, Val. It’s probably best if you don’t tell Sara I was here at all.”

Peter found his way out of the office and forced himself to spend several minutes conversing with his employees as if nothing had happened. He managed to escape and headed for the street. To his relief, the inn was only a few minutes’ walk away. The storm clouds had finally opened up, and in the driving rain, it seemed like twenty miles. He stumbled up the stairs and found Abigail’s door. He went to knock and then hesitated. Did he really want her to see him like this?

He slowly withdrew his hand and walked softly down the hall to the door that led into his own room. He needed time to compose himself. Abigail was far too perceptive to see him in this state and not ask questions that he knew he had no answers for. He sat on the side of the bed and allowed his head to drop into his hands.

What in damnation was he going to do now?

Abby looked up from her book as she registered the soft knock on the connecting door between her room and Peter’s. She’d spent an agreeable hour with Miss Trixie who had retired for a nap. She had taken advantage of Peter’s continued absence to curl up in a chair by the fire, perch her spectacles on her nose and read the latest lurid tale from the Minerva press. Peter came in, shut the door behind him and bowed. Abby took off her glasses.

“Well, Peter, how did it go?”

He took the chair opposite and poured himself a cup of tea from the pot in front of her. His hair was damp from the rain, his skin pale. He sipped at the tea and then grimaced.

“This is cold.”

“That is because I ordered it about two hours ago.” She put down her book. “Would you like me to order some more?”

“It isn’t necessary, but thank you for the offer.”

Abby studied him more carefully. He was at his most polite, which usually meant he was trying to distance himself from her. She leaned forward and took the cup from his hand.

“What happened? Was it bad news?”

His answering smile was as flat and perfect as a frozen lake.

“It depends on how you define bad.”

“Peter…”

He shrugged. “Lord Sokorvsky told me that something interesting came up in the accounts of the shipping company we recently took over. Apparently this company had documentation regarding the ship I left England on that was bound for Russia.”

Abby clasped her hands in her lap. “Did they have any record of you?”

“I was there, listed alongside the rest of the crew.” He glanced up at her and then looked away. “Not quite the gentleman you might have imagined.”

She ignored his self-deprecating statement. “Why were you on that ship?”

“I told you. I was working like the rest of the crew. Working to pay my passage to a better life, apparently.”

Abby frowned. “I have heard of workhouses and orphanages sending children to the colonies. Why would they have put you on a ship going to Russia?”

“They didn’t. My mother did.”

“Your mother?”

He shrugged. “Lord Sokorvsky even found an old employee of the shipping line to confirm that he had indeed met me and my mother. Mr. Cole understood that she was sending me to relatives who were missionaries in Russia.”

His gaze glanced off her again as he didn’t want her to see his eyes. His hands were clenched tightly in his lap, his knuckles white. She took a careful breath. Despite his light conversational tone it was obvious that this news had affected Peter far more deeply than he was prepared to admit.

“Do you remember her?”

“My mother? Not at all. I don’t remember boarding the ship or anything until I woke up naked in a Turkish slave market with Valentin.”

She nodded. “I thought it must’ve been Lord Sokorvsky you were enslaved with.”

He winced. “Please forget I said that. The experiences I shared with you are my own and no one else’s.”

“Still protecting him, Peter?”

He sighed, pushing a hand through his damp fair hair, his face lined with weariness. “My mother left an address, although the shipping company was never able to contact her there.”

“It is possible she made it up. She sounds like a woman who was running out of options if she chose to send her child away from her.”

Peter stared at her. “I am impressed at your attempts to be fair to a woman you do not know.” His smile was bitter. “I regret to say that I cannot think quite so kindly of her at the moment.”

“Perhaps her family abandoned her and she had no other choice.”

“Perhaps she just wanted to get rid of me.” He sat back in his chair. “Thanks to Lord Sokorvsky’s interference it seems I might find out.”

“He contacted your family?”

“He contacted the people who live at the address she gave, a rectory in the north of England. How ironic is that? Apparently a man, who might be my grandfather, is expecting a visit from me in London in the next few days.”

Abigail jumped to her feet. “Then we must hurry! We don’t need to stay another night; we can be on our way now.”

He smiled at her. “Are you so eager to be gone, Abigail?”

“Of course, if it means you find your family.”

He stood up and walked away from her to the window, hands clasped behind his back.

“What if they don’t wish to find me?”

She stared at the rigid set of his shoulders. “Why should they not?”

“If I was truly wanted, surely they would have come looking for me a long time ago.”

She moved to stand behind him, hating the terrible edge of uncertainty in his softly spoken words. She wrapped her arms around him and smoothed her cheek against the fabric of his dark coat.

“Perhaps they didn’t know that you survived?”

He sighed, the sound torn from him, his agitated breath condensing on the windowpane.

“Then if we are not leaving until tomorrow…” She turned him around and started working on the buttons of his waistcoat. He stopped her hands with his own.

“Abigail, you don’t have to do this. I would completely understand if you wished to review our relationship in light of these revelations.”

“Because you had a mother?”

“Because it seems I’m a peasant and a bastard.”

She covered his mouth with her fingers, cutting off his words.

“Come to bed, Peter.”

She cupped his balls and smoothed her fingers along his rapidly growing shaft, hoped she had enough skill to love him as he deserved to be loved, to make him feel as worthy as the next man and to forget all his troubles for a few blissful hours by sharing himself with her.

13

P
eter sat on the window seat of his guest bedroom in the Beechams’ London town house and stared out at the ironclad morning. A pale sun rose over the slate rooftops making them gleam like scales. He touched the rippled panes of glass, felt the cold leech into his fingertips. Whatever happened today would change him forever. Either he would find out he had a family or he would start looking for them in earnest.

He sighed, his breath condensing in the frigid air like a ghost. Did it really matter? Part of him believed he should be proud of what he had achieved, while the other longed for a family history like the Beechams had, a sense of anchoring yourself between the past and the future, a sense of belonging.

He pictured Abigail’s smiling face as he’d led her and Miss Trixie into the house on the previous evening, her pleasure in being with James again.

“What are you thinking about?”

Peter shivered as James wrapped his arms around him from behind. James smelled of the sex they’d shared and of warm, contented male. Peter allowed himself to lean back against James’s shoulder. After dinner on the previous evening, Abigail had pleaded tiredness and left them to their own devices. James hadn’t wasted much time in visiting Peter’s chamber and sliding into bed with him.

“I’m thinking about my family, or lack of it.”

James drew him closer, one finger stroking Peter’s nipple ring. “Whatever happens, you still have friends and people who care for you.”

“I know. It’s just that the thought of being part of a family is such a difficult thing for me to grasp.” He sighed. “I might find them, only to be cast out when I am forced to reveal what a mess I have made of my life.”

“You survived years of slavery and returned to your home country to start a successful and prosperous business. What fault can anyone find with that?”

Peter chuckled. “There speaks the true aristocrat, always assuming that his actions are correct and not open to question.”

James nipped at his ear and rocked his hips against Peter’s back. “I’ll have to leave soon so that the servants don’t see me here. Can I tempt you back to bed?”

Resolutely Peter shoved his problems to the back of his mind and turned to study James. “Tonight belongs to Abigail, agreed?”

“If you insist.” James groaned as Peter reached forward to stroke his cock.

“I do insist. You might be pleasantly surprised. Your wife is an incredibly passionate woman.”

Peter allowed James to guide him back to the shadowed bed, his own cock rising in anticipation. James lay back on the rumpled sheets, his dark tousled hair in stark contrast to the white linen, his shaft already stiff and eager.

Peter licked the wet crown. “You are insatiable.”

“Only for you.” James groaned. “While you’ve been enjoying yourself with my wife, I’ve been pining away in this big house by myself.”