Slightly Sinful (2 page)

His horse pawed the air once more and galloped away.

T HE QUIET, SEEMINGLY RESPECTABLE HOUSE ON THE Rue d'Aremberg in Brussels that four English "ladies" had rented two months before was in reality a brothel. Bridget Clover, Flossie Streat, Geraldine Ness, and Phyllis Leavey had come over together from London on the calculated-and correct-assumption that business in Brussels would be brisk until all the military madness had somehow been resolved. And they were very close to achieving the ambition that had brought them together in a working partnership and fast friendship four years before. Their goal, their dream, was to save enough of their earnings to enable them to retire from their profession and purchase a house somewhere in England that they would run jointly as a respectable ladies' boarding house. They had had every reason to expect that by the time they returned to England they would be free women.

But their dream had just been shattered.

On the very day when the guns of war booming somewhere south of the city proclaimed the fact that hostilities had finally been engaged and a colossal battle was raging, they had learned that all was lost in their personal world, that all their hard-earned money was gone.

Stolen.

And it was all Rachel York's fault.

She had brought the news herself, coming back into the city from the north instead of continuing on her way home to England as almost all the other British visitors to Brussels were doing. Even many of the local residents were fleeing northward. But Rachel had returned. She had come back to tell the ladies the terrible truth. But instead of raining down recriminations upon her head, as she had fully expected they would do, they had actually taken her in, since she had nowhere else to go, and given her the one spare bedchamber in the house as her own.

She was now the newest resident of the brothel.

The very thought of it might have horrified her just a short while ago. Or it might just as easily have amused her, since she had a healthy sense of humor. But right now, at this moment, she felt too wretched to react in any way at all to the simple fact that she was now living with whores.

It was well after midnight. It was not a working night, a fact for which Rachel might have felt thankful if she had been thinking straight at all. But she had been distraught all day yesterday and today too until she had arrived here and broken the ghastly news. Now she was merely numb.

Numb and horribly guilty.

They were in the sitting room, the five of them. It would have been difficult to go to bed and to sleep anyway, but there was the added distraction of the battle that had been raging all day. They had been able to hear it, even though it was being fought miles away from the city, if rumor had the truth of it. There had been a great deal of rumor and many waves of panic when the citizens who had not already fled had expected an imminent invasion by war-maddened French soldiers. But news had come late in the evening that the battle was over, that the British and her allies had won the victory and were chasing the French army back in the direction of Paris.

"A fat lot of good that will do us," Geraldine had commented, her hands splayed on her magnificent hips. "All those lovely men gone and us sitting here like a quartet of poor church mice."

But it was not just the war news that had kept them all up. It was dismay and fury and frustration-and the burning desire for revenge.

Geraldine was pacing, her purple silk dressing gown billowing out behind her with each long stride while the violet nightgown beneath it molded her voluptuous figure, and her loose black hair bounced against her shoulders, and one arm sawed the air as if she were a tragedian onstage. Her Italian heritage was very obvious to Rachel, who sat to one side of the fireplace, hugging a shawl about her shoulders even though it was not a cold night.

"The slimy, villainous toad," Geraldine declaimed. "Just wait till I get my hands on him. I'll tear him limb from limb. I'll squeeze the life out of him."

"We have to find him first, Gerry," Bridget said. She was sprawled in a chair, looking weary. She was also rather dazzling on the eyes, her shocking pink dressing gown clashing horribly with her improbably red hair.

"Oh, I'll find him, Bridge, never you worry." Geraldine lifted her hands before her face and made it very clear what she would do with them if the neck of the Reverend Nigel Crawley had just been obliging enough to appear between them at that moment.

But Nigel Crawley was long gone. He was probably in England by now, a great deal of money that was not his own on his very handsome and pious and villainous person.

Rachel thought she would rather enjoy blackening both his eyes herself and knocking his perfect teeth down his throat, though she was not normally of a violent turn of mind. If it were not for her, he would never have met these ladies. And if he had not met them, he would not have made off with their savings.

Flossie was pacing too, somehow avoiding collisions with Geraldine. With her short blond curls and big blue eyes and tiny stature and pastel-colored garments, Flossie looked as if her head might be stuffed with nothing more valuable than fluff, but she could read and write, and she had a head for numbers. She was the treasurer of the partnership.

"We have to find Mr. Creepy Crawley," she said. "How or where or when I do not know since he has the whole of England to hide in-or even the whole of the world for that matter, and we have almost no money left to go after him with. But I'll find him if it's the last thing I do in this life. And if you have claimed his neck for your own, Gerry, I'll take another part of him and put a knot in it."

"It's probably too little to tie in a knot, though, Floss," Phyllis said. Plump and pretty and placid, her brown hair always neatly styled, her clothes always plain and unremarkable, Phyllis looked the least like Rachel's image of a whore. And ever practical, she had just come back into the sitting room with a large tray of tea and cakes. "Anyway, he will have spent all our money long before we find him."

"All the more reason," Geraldine said, "to mash up every bone in his body. Revenge can be sweet for its own sake, Phyll."

"How ever are we going to find him, though?" Bridget asked, pushing the fingers of one hand through her red tresses.

"We will write letters, you and I, Bridge," Flossie said, "to all the sisterhood who can read. We know sisters in London and Brighton and Bath and Harrogate and a few other places, don't we? We will put out the word, and we will find him. But we are going to need money to chase after him with." She sighed and stopped pacing for a moment.

"All we need to do, then, is think of a way to get rich quick," Geraldine said, sawing the air again with one arm. "Any ideas, anyone? Is there some nabob we can rob?"

They all began naming various gentlemen, presumably their clients, who were or had been staying in Brussels. Rachel recognized a few of the names. But the ladies were not serious. They paused after naming a dozen or so and snickered merrily-a relief to them, no doubt, after the terrible realization today that all their savings were gone, stolen by a rogue masquerading as a clergyman.

Flossie plopped herself down on the settee and picked up one of the cakes from the plate. "Actually there may be a way," she said, "though we would have to act quickly. And it would not be robbing exactly. A person cannot rob the dead, can she? They have no further use for their things."

"Lord love us, Floss," Phyllis said, sinking down beside her, a cup and saucer in her hands, "whatever are you thinking of? I am not going about raiding any churchyards, if that is what you have on your mind. The very idea! Can you picture the four of us, shovels over our shoulders-"

"The dead from the battle, I am talking about," Flossie explained, while all the rest of them looked at her, arrested, and Rachel hugged her shawl more tightly about her. "Loads of people will be doing it. Hordes of them are already out there, I would wager, pretending to look for loved ones but really looking for loot instead. It is an easy thing for women to do. All we would need is a pathetic, slightly frantic look and a man's name on our lips. We would have to get out there soon, though, if we were to have a chance of finding anything of any value. We could make back everything we have lost if we were lucky-and diligent."

Rachel could hear teeth chattering, realized they were her own, and clamped them firmly together. Raiding the dead-it sounded lurid. It sounded like the stuff of nightmares.

"I don't know, Floss," Bridget said doubtfully. "It doesn't seem right. But you aren't serious anyway, are you?"

"Why not?" Geraldine asked, both hands raised expansively. "As Floss said, it wouldn't be exactly robbing, would it?"

"And we wouldn't be hurting anyone," Flossie said. "They are already dead."

"Oh, goodness." Rachel set both palms against her cheeks and held them there. "I am the one who should be finding a solution. This is all my fault."

Everyone's attention swung her way.

"It is not, my love," Bridget assured her. "It most certainly is not. If it is anyone's fault, it is mine for allowing you to notice me and for letting you come inside this house. I must have had rocks in my head."

"It was not your fault, Rache," Geraldine agreed. "It was our fault. We four have oceans more experience with men than you do. I thought I could pick out a rogue from a mile away with one eye shut. But I was taken in by that handsome villain just as surely as you were."

"So was I," Flossie added. "I had kept a firm grip about the purse strings for four years until he came along with his sweet talk of loving and honoring us because we shared the same profession as that Magdalene woman, and Jesus loved her. I would slap myself about the head if it would do any good. I gave him our savings to take back to England to deposit safely in a bank. I let him take the money-I even thanked him for taking it-and now it is all gone. It was my fault more than anyone's."

"Not so, Floss," Phyllis said. "We all agreed to it. That's what we have always done-planned together, worked together, made decisions together."

"But I introduced him to you," Rachel said with a sigh. "I was so proud of him for not shunning you. I brought him here. I betrayed you all."

"Nonsense, Rache," Geraldine said briskly. "You lost everything you had to him too, didn't you, the same as we did? And you had the courage to come back and tell us about it when as far as you knew we might have bitten your head off."

"We are wasting time with this pointless talk about who is to blame," Flossie said, "when we all know who is to blame. If we don't decide to get out fast to where the fighting was, there will be nothing left for us."

"I for one am going, Floss, even if I have to go alone," Geraldine said. "There will be rich pickings out there, I don't doubt, and I mean to have some of them. I mean to have money to go after that blackest of black-hearted villains with."

No one seemed to consider the fact that if they could acquire a great deal of money in such a way they might simply use it to replace their loss and restore their dream and forget about the Reverend Nigel Crawley, who might be anywhere on the globe at that moment or within the next few days or weeks. But sometimes outrage and the need for revenge could take precedence even over dreams.

"I have a client coming tomorrow afternoon-or this afternoon, I suppose I mean," Bridget said, crossing her arms beneath her bosom and hunching her shoulders. "Young Hawkins. I couldn't go out for more than a little while, and so it would not be worth my going at all, would it?"

Her voice was shaking slightly, Rachel noticed.

"And I won't go even though I don't have Bridget's excuse," Phyllis said, looking apologetic as she set down her cup and saucer. "I'm sorry, but I would fall into a dead faint at the first sight of blood, and then I would be useless. And I would have nightmares for the rest of my life and wake you all up every night with my screams. I probably will anyway at the very thought of it. I'll stay and answer the door to any callers while Bridget's working."

"Working!" Flossie said with a groan. "Unless we do something about our situation, we are going to be working until we are old and decrepit, Phyll."

"I already am that," Bridget said.

"No, you aren't, Bridge," Flossie told her firmly. "You are in your prime. Lots of the young bucks still come to you from choice rather than to any of the rest of us, especially the virgins."

"Because I remind them of their mothers," Bridget said.

"With those tresses, Bridge?" Geraldine said with an inelegant snort. "I think not."

"I don't make them nervous or afraid of being failures," Bridget explained. "I make it all right for them to be less than perfect their first few times. What man ever is perfect for a good long while, after all? And most never are."

Despite herself, Rachel could feel herself blushing.

"You and I will go, then, Gerry," Flossie said, getting to her feet. "I am not in the least afraid of a few dead bodies. Nor am I afraid of nightmares. Let's go and make our fortune and then let's make that Crawley fellow sorry his father ever looked at his mother with lust in his eye."

"I would go too," Bridget said. "But young Hawkins insisted upon coming today. He wants me to teach him how to impress his bride when he marries in the autumn."