Slightly Sinful (12 page)

Rachel shut her eyes very tightly. How humiliating! She had not fooled him for a moment.

A LLEYNE'S LEG WAS THROBBING LIKE THE VERY devil.

He ignored the pain and concentrated upon his irritation. He had given in to the temptation to dally with what he thought was an experienced woman, but instead he had found himself debauching innocence. He should have listened to his instincts, he told himself now that it was too late. He had always thought of her as a lady. He had always called her Miss York.

Why the deuce had she allowed it?

He felt like a rapist, for God's sake.

And he ought not to have done it anyway, even if she had been a whore of twenty years' experience. She had saved his life. She had nursed him tirelessly ever since. And he had thanked her by lusting after her and taking her . . . Well, he had taken her virginity.

But not by force, damn it.

She might have stopped him at almost any moment along the way.

He was annoyed with her, more than annoyed with himself. Good God, he had not even tried to make their actual copulation a pleasurable experience for her. He had been so shocked . . .

She had removed herself from his body and from the bed moments after he had spoken to her and had disappeared behind the screen in the corner of the room, taking her clothes with her-a rather pointless display of modesty after what they had just done together.

At the risk of adding even more to the pain in his leg he reached over the side of the bed and pulled his nightshirt back on. He laced his fingers behind his head, stared up at the plain canopy over the bed, and waited.

She came tiptoeing around the screen eventually-perhaps she was hoping he had fallen asleep. She had forgotten to take the hairpins back there with her. She had pushed her hair behind her ears, but it lay along her back in thick, disheveled golden curls. She looked more gorgeous than ever, he thought resentfully.

"I thought you were asleep," she said after darting him a quick glance.

"Did you?" he said. "Sit down, Miss York, and tell me what the deuce that was all about."

She sat on the chair and gazed blankly at him.

"Why," he asked her, "did you not tell me? Did you feel coerced? Did I say or do anything to suggest that you had no choice?"

Her cheeks flamed and her teeth sank into her lower lip. She clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them for a few moments while he regarded her with something that felt very like loathing. Perhaps it ought not to have mattered whether she was a whore or a virgin, but it did. It mattered a great deal. He was not the sort of man-surely he was not-who went about deflowering virgins. Was he the sort of man who went about sleeping with whores, then? He did not know, though suddenly he hoped not.

Good God, they were women. They were people. He thought of Geraldine and the others. Yes, they were people.

"Has it occurred to you, Mr. Smith," she asked him, "that there has to be a first time for every woman?"

"And for a respectable woman," he retorted, "for a lady, that ought to be in a marriage bed. I cannot even offer you marriage. Did you realize that? I may already be married."

She bit her lip again-but he had stopped finding the sight enchanting.

"I would not marry you even if you were as free as a bird," she said, "and went down on one knee and made me a pretty speech. I am not a fool, Mr. Smith, even if I was a virgin until a short while ago. I did this for the same reason you did it-because I wanted to, because I fancied you. It makes no difference to anything except that what might have been a pleasant memory has now been spoiled by your anger. Why are you angry? Was I so terribly disappointing? So were you if you want to know the truth."

He looked at her, arrested, and despite himself felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

"No! Was I?" he asked her. "I did go off like an inexperienced schoolboy, I must admit. You took me so completely by surprise."

She stared back at him, looking rather mulish.

"I can hardly wait," he said, "to hear your story, Miss York. You are a lady and you were a virgin until a short while ago, and yet you live in a brothel with four whores and obviously care so deeply for them that you will even claim to be one of them rather than seem to set yourself above them morally. Perhaps now you even believe you are one of them. How long have you been here?"

"Since June the fifteenth," she said. "Since the day of the Battle of Waterloo."

"The same day I came here?" He looked at her with narrowed eyes.

"The day before," she said. "But we were up all night and so I never actually slept in this room."

He shifted position slightly to try to ease the burning in his leg. He ought to send her on her way. Doubtless she was eager to be gone from here-she had found him disappointing, by God. A few minutes ago he had been eager to see the back of her too. But this whole experience at the brothel had been somewhat bizarre. He had the feeling it would become more so if he heard her story. And he was not going to sleep anytime soon even if she went away.

"What brought you here?" he asked her. "Am I permitted to know the details?"

She looked down at her hands.

"My mother died when I was six years old," she told him. "My father hired a nurse to care for me. She was Bridget Clover and became a second mother to me, though I realize now that she must have been very young at the time. I loved her dearly. I had little contact with any other children-or adults, for that matter. We lived in London, and my father was rarely at home. My heart was broken when I was twelve years old and Bridget had to leave. I no longer needed a nurse at that age, my father told me, but I knew it was an excuse. He could no longer afford to pay her. He was forever winning and losing fortunes at the gaming tables, but at that time he had suffered a whole series of losses. It was ten years before I saw Bridget again-on a street here in Brussels a couple of months or so ago."

"That must have been quite a shock for you," he said.

"Because of her appearance, you mean?" she asked him. "Her hair was bright red, of course, and she was somewhat flamboyantly dressed, though she was not wearing cosmetics. But the thing was that I recognized her instantly and did not really notice how her appearance had changed. She was just my beloved Bridget."

He watched her hands twist in her lap.

"When you love someone," she said, "you no longer see that person objectively. You see with your heart. I wondered why she evaded my questions about what she was doing here and where she was employed. I wondered why she kept glancing around at the other people on the street as though she were embarrassed and seemed eager to get away from me. I was hurt."

"But you would not be so easily shrugged off?" he asked her.

"No." She sighed. "It would have been better for Bridget and the others if I had stuck my nose in the air as soon as I realized the truth-and I did realize it after a few minutes-and had gone on my way. I did her no great favor by insisting upon visiting her here in this house. She allowed me to come only after I had told her that I was employed too, as companion to Lady Flatley, and that I was lonely and homesick. My father died over a year ago, leaving nothing but debts behind him."

"And so you visited the brothel," he said. What an innocent she must have been. But rather a brave one, he conceded, and one who lived by principle rather than by social convention.

"Yes." She looked at him and smiled suddenly at the memory. "They were all gathered in the sitting room the afternoon I came, and they were all dressed with almost dreary respectability and were on their very best behavior. I liked them instantly. They were . . . I am not even sure I know what word I am searching for. They were genuine. They were real people, unlike Lady Flatley and all her brittle friends."

He waited for her to continue, to describe the events that had led her to coming here to live.

"I met the Reverend Nigel Crawley at Lady Flatley's," she said. "He used to come there often, sometimes alone, sometimes with his sister. He was very charming. All the ladies were enchanted with him. He did not have a church of his own in England. He wished to be free, he explained, to devote himself to charitable works and to raising money for worthy causes. He had come to Brussels because he thought he could bring some comfort to all the thousands of men who would soon be facing death in battle."

"There are regimental chaplains," Alleyne said.

"I know," she said. "But he claimed that they devoted their time to the officers and neglected the needs of the enlisted men."

"I suppose," he said dryly, "you fell instantly in love with him. Was he handsome?"

"Oh, gloriously so," she told him. "He was tall and blond and had a charming smile. But I merely admired him at first. He did not even notice me. I was little more than a servant."

Perhaps, Alleyne thought cynically, it was because she had no money with which to fill the man's charitable coffers.

"Do I begin to smell a rat?" he asked.

She frowned. "When he did notice me," she said, "and began paying court to me, I found him irresistible. Not because of his looks or because I fell in love with him, but because he was full of zeal for his work and for his faith. And because he was a principled, steady, generous, dependable man. I have not known many such men in my life. I was undeniably dazzled. Miss Crawley became my friend too."

"Definitely a rat," Alleyne said. "But it must have been your looks rather than your fortune that attracted him. You are penniless, I suppose?"

He noticed the flush of color in her cheeks, but she was looking down at her hands again.

"He started to speak to me whenever he came to Lady Flatley's," she said. "He took me walking whenever I had an hour free. Miss Crawley invited me for tea. How long ago it seems already and how naive I was then! When he asked me to marry him, I accepted without hesitation. Perhaps the thing I admired most about him was the fact that when we came upon Geraldine and Bridget while we were out walking one afternoon, he asked for an introduction even though it must have been very obvious to him what they were. He spoke kindly to them, and somehow-I still do not know how it happened-we were invited here for tea."

From her silence and several audible swallows, he guessed that the narrative was becoming painful to her. But he said nothing. He tried again to ease his leg into a more comfortable position.

She laced her fingers into her palms and then closed her hands about them.

"He was very skilled at worming information out of people," she said. "Without realizing I had done it, I had told him about my inheritance even before he started to court me in earnest. And Geraldine or Bridget-I do not remember which-told him about their dream of saving enough money to buy a guesthouse somewhere in England so that they could retire from their profession. I believe they must even have told him that they were close to achieving their goal but had never trusted any bank to keep their money safe."

If she was an heiress, Alleyne thought in surprise, why the devil had she taken employment as a lady's companion and then come to live in a brothel? But he would not interrupt her narrative by asking the questions aloud.

"I was pathetically grateful to him for treating my friends with such respect and kindness," she said.

Alleyne grimaced. "And he took all their money?" he asked her. "He must be very clever indeed. Whores are notoriously difficult to dupe."

"He was so very courteous and kind with them," she said. "He even worked into the conversation one day the fact that he felt a particular reverence for prostitutes since our Lord himself treated them with respect. He persuaded them that being in a foreign country during uncertain times made them unusually vulnerable to theft. He persuaded them to put the money into his safekeeping since he was about to leave Belgium. He promised to take it back to London and deposit it at a bank, where it would earn interest."

"Poor ladies," he said with genuine sympathy. He had grown to like them all.

"And so he left," she said, "with what had taken them years of hard work to earn. He also left with sizable donations for his various charities from Lady Flatley and half the other ladies here in Brussels. Lady Flatley was leaving for England too, but she was vexed with me when I told her I was going to marry Mr. Crawley and dismissed me out of hand. I left with the Crawleys. We were to marry in England and were then to go to my uncle's to claim my inheritance. But quite by chance I overheard Mr. and Miss Crawley talking together while we were waiting for passage to England-I had followed them down to breakfast at the inn instead of staying in my room to write a final letter to Bridget as I had planned. They were talking about what they would do with all the money, and they were laughing. They both sounded very much unlike their usual selves."

She frowned down at her hands, and for a few moments Alleyne wondered if she was going to be able to continue. But finally she looked up at him with troubled, unseeing eyes.

"I confronted them immediately," she said. "It did not occur to me to dissemble. I demanded that they give me my friends' money and my own, which I had given Mr. Crawley for safekeeping, though it was not a vast sum. But they both protested their innocence and tried to assure me that they had been joking. I ran upstairs with them both on my heels and tried to find the money, but of course I could not find it in either his room or hers. I knew anyway that he would never let me take it. If I went for a constable, what would I say? Flossie had given him the money voluntarily with the full approval of the others. I had given him my money-I was his betrothed. I remembered that he carried pistols as a precaution against highwaymen and thieves. I gave in to cowardly fear, apologized for my silly doubts, returned to my room, which was mercifully on the ground floor, and then fled out through the window. I made my way back here to tell Bridget and the others how they had been deceived and how I had unwittingly been responsible for their loss."