Unmasking Sin, page 15
“Mark, the footman,” said Ludovic Dunne, taking her by surprise all over again. “He meets one of your uncle’s servants. I suspect the night Renwick’s man broke in, Mark had left the door open for his friend, who never actually appeared. He is paid for his information, though not very much. He doesn’t seem to understand what harm he is doing. After all, he has nothing much to tell about you. Except that you go to Maida Gardens alone some evenings.”
She raised her eyes to his. “Is that how you found me that first night?”
“Yes. Your uncles knew about those visits.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “It must have felt like a gift to them.”
“A hollow one, without substance. Will you dismiss Mark?”
“Yes. No. I’m not sure yet. I’ll talk to him, lecture him on loyalty, and let him choose his master. But he will have no more chances.”
“You are kind.”
“You mean I am weak and let people walk all over me.”
His eyes widened. “No, I don’t mean that at all. You have survived things I don’t even like to imagine and still hold your head high against the kind of adversity, isolation, and petty malice that would have worn a lesser person down. Yet you keep everything together still, for your son. I admire strength like yours. I envy it.”
She smiled a little tremulously, convulsively clutching one boot too tightly. The other fell onto the sand, narrowly missing her toes. They both bent to pick it up, but he was faster. She straightened slowly. She meant to take the boot from him, but with unshed tears suddenly clogging her throat, she seized his hand instead. “Thank you. You are a kind man.”
“No, I’m not,” he said revolted. “I’m a cold-hearted practitioner of the law.”
She smiled shakily, watching in some surprise as her thumb moved across his long, strong fingers. They felt good in her grasp, solid, warm… She liked his hands. She blinked, forcing her thumb to stillness, and glanced fleetingly up at him.
A responsive smile was dying on his lips, and for some reason, her heart seemed to turn over. He did not draw his hand away, but it grew heavy, making the rest of her tingle.
Hastily, she dropped his hand as though it burned her and strove for lightness. “Then please turn your cold heart back toward the others. I think we have wandered far enough.”
“Would you like me to carry your boots behind my back?” he asked gravely.
“Yes, please.” She handed them over, and he walked with his hands behind his back, dangling her boots.
A breath of laughter escaped her. “It does make you look quite pompous.”
“I am pompous.”
“No, you’re not.” She kept her curious gaze on her profile. “Why do you do this kind of work? I understood solicitors are well remunerated for just being solicitors.”
“Certainly, with the right clients. I have a motley collection, enough wealthy ones to make a decent living. But between you and me, it’s a deadly dull business. So I welcome short-term clients, too.”
“To solve their problems, as your brother put it.”
“When I can.”
“But I think you are not motivated entirely by boredom,” she said shrewdly.
“I like to see justice,” he admitted.
“Like Lord Dominic Gorse. And not like Theo’s uncles.”
“Exactly.”
“I suppose that is why you chose the profession you did.” She searched his profile, for he was not looking at her, and she sensed a faint tension. “But there is more to it than that.”
His lips parted, then closed again on the words he might have spoken.
“What is Captain Dauncy to you?” she blurted.
His gaze flew to hers, but not in anger as she had half-feared. He looked…surprised. “Perhaps I will tell you one day. For now, perhaps it is time you resumed the tyranny of your boots. I shall stand in front of you as before and gaze romantically out to sea.”
She emitted an unladylike snort that made him smile. She caught it with some triumph just before she stepped behind him. Standing on one leg, she tried to brush the sand off one foot before wrestling her foot into the stocking. It was much harder to put them back on in this fashion than it had been to drag them on.
“Feel free to hold on,” he offered, so she did, making frequent grabs at his coat to steady herself and eventually emerging beside him, slightly flushed.
As he politely offered his arm, there was a gleam in his eyes which she assumed meant he was laughing at her.
*
As it happened, she was quite wrong. Ludovic wanted to laugh, for the antics behind him, even unseen, were funny. But for some reason, that only seemed to add to his awareness of the woman putting her dainty feet into stockings and drawing them up her shapely legs. He knew, somehow, that they were shapely, firm, and strong from walking, and smooth as silk to the touch…
He swallowed and scowled at the sea he was meant to be admiring. He had only just begun to win her trust. She did not need his lechery, just his help. The trouble was, the lone, breath-taking beauty he had first seen at Maida had combined now with the brave and wronged widow fighting for her son and with the enticing siren who had kissed him to win his confession. This charming creature who bantered with him and walked barefoot in the sand was dangerously close to a friend. And now the whole being that was Rebecca Cornish threatened to enslave him utterly.
When she had seized his hand in sheer gratitude, he had felt pity and anger for the burdens she had borne alone for so long. But God help him, the caress of her thumb had made every pulse in his body leap. He had been afraid to move. And now he was heating rapidly to visions of his hands on her stockings, putting them on or taking them off, he didn’t mind which. Tying her garters…
He kicked himself brutally in the ankle, and as she emerged, slightly flushed from her endeavors, he offered her his arm. But as they strolled back to the others, his pleasure in the moment soared. One short, not very solitary walk, while she almost trusted him, and he was hoping for others, imagining others.
Stop. She is your client whom your previous clients tried to wrong.
But there remained, as there had always been, the possibility of friendship.
Chapter Fourteen
On the day of the Calverts’ ball, most of the houseguests spent the afternoon resting. In truth, there was little incentive to go out, for the weather had turned rainy. Leaving Tom to the boisterous games in the nursery, under the tolerant eye of the nursemaids, Rebecca wandered alone about the house.
Too restless to lie down or even sit and read, she had a vague idea of soothing herself with some music. Of course, there was a pianoforte in the drawing room, on which several unmarried young ladies had displayed their musical accomplishments over the last several evenings. However, Rebecca did not wish to be disturbed as she took out her troubled emotions on some unsuspecting instrument. So she followed a few lesser passages in search of a music room, or even just a storeroom containing an old spinet or something.
She was just about to give up when muffled but unmistakable sounds of pianoforte music reached her.
Someone, it seemed, had beaten her to it.
Nevertheless, she followed the music around the corner and up a small flight of three steps to where a door stood ajar.
Ludovic Dunne sat at a small box pianoforte by the window. His usually neat, silvery hair flopped forward over his forehead, and he had removed his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, which he had thrown over a nearby chair.
This is Ludovic Dunne, she thought in wonder. The real man. Not the business-like solicitor or the charming gentleman, but the person within.
He plays music… And not just with competence, but with feeling. Emotions flew across his face as quickly as his fingers found the keys—passion, humor, pain, and elation, and all the mixed-up shades between.
Rebecca stood still and silent in the doorway, gradually leaning against the doorframe, her gaze fixed on his face, her ears entranced. She wanted to weep, not just because she had discovered him, but because of who she had found and what his music said to her.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, watching, listening, until, without warning, his head snapped up, and his eyes locked with hers. His hands stilled, and the music stopped abruptly.
Frozen, it seemed she could not even run. A faint frown tugged at his brow. Then he stood, shoving back the stool so quickly, it fell over, and he strode toward her. At last, her paralysis broke, and she stumbled backward out of the room. But before she could run, his hands closed over her shoulders, not rough or angry but strong enough to whisk her straight back into the room.
He stared down at her in clear concern. “What is it? What has happened?”
Almost violently, she shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing has happened.”
One hand lifted from her shoulder, and he touched her damp cheek with the back of two gentle fingers. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” she muttered, truly appalled now as she dashed her hand across her face. “It’s just the music.”
The frown deepened and smoothed. “Music makes you weep?”
“Sometimes,” she said defiantly. “Doesn’t it with you?”
“No.” At least he seemed to be thinking about it while one hand lay heavily on her shoulder, and the fingers of the other rubbed absently together as though feeling the texture of her tears. “It… absorbs me. And then my mind is clear enough to think.” The flicker of a deprecating smile touched his lips. “Sometimes.”
And then his fingers moved on her shoulder like a caress. His other softly cupped her cheek, and she could not breathe, let alone move.
“You are so very sweet,” he murmured, as though puzzled, although his eyes seemed fascinated, especially when his gaze dropped to her mouth.
Nervously, she licked her upper lip and heard his breath catch. For an instant, time seemed to stop. There was only the large man all but embracing her, his moving fingers spreading strange, languorous heat from her shoulder downward to her tingling abdomen. The tender touch of his palm on her cheek. He was close enough that she could feel his breath on her face, inhale the familiar, masculine scent she recalled from Maida. She remembered his kiss. And she wanted another. She wanted to kiss him and mean it, to feel…
With apparent effort, his fingers stilled on her shoulder and slid down her arm to take her hand. Her cheek, which showed a tendency she couldn’t control to lean into his palm, was suddenly cold. But at least he held her hand, raising it with a faint, deprecating smile to kiss her fingers. And then the inside of her wrist.
Heat engulfed her like wildfire.
“You have come to talk,” he said ruefully.
She blinked, drawing a quick, unsteady breath. “No. I came to play in peace, to decide if I trusted you enough to ask for your help.”
A strange expression passed across his face—mingled amusement, regret, and relief, maybe even frustration—and then his eyelids swept down. When they lifted, his eyes were still shuttered. And her hand was free.
“Then I shall leave you in possession of the pianoforte,” he said lightly.
“There is no need. I have already decided.”
He blinked, perhaps at the odd abruptness of her declaration. “And?”
“And I do want your help if you are still prepared to give it.”
His eyes lightened. A smile curved his lips. “Then shall we sit down?”
The nature of his work meant that Ludovic had received instructions in some unusual situations. But this, surely, was the strangest. He had been on the verge of seducing her, for God’s sake. Or at least trying to. And he didn’t even know why, except that she was lovely and sweet as he had said, and suddenly so openly vulnerable that, for an insane few moments, making love to her had seemed the best solution.
Jesus, he castigated himself. Do you mean to lay her on the carpet? Take her over the dusty pianoforte? What is the matter with you?
He almost walked away from the temptation. Only her sudden declaration of trust, which seemed to be directly related to his musical skills, or lack thereof, had stayed him. She needed his help now, and he would give it.
So, she sat in the slightly dusty armchair by the empty hearth, and he brought the piano stool over to sit at a confidential yet respectful distance. She told him her problem in greater detail, from Sir Theodore’s illness and death until now, and he told her what he would need of her when they returned to London and what investigations he would begin.
“It may not bring you everything you deserve,” he warned. “If the money is gone, you may never receive what should have been yours or Tom’s. But at least we can prevent any more leaking away and have the estate removed from their control. This should also prevent the spread of any further rumors against you and help with the rehabilitation of your reputation, which you have already begun. For the rest, we shall have your mother-in-law out of Redpath Hall—with all the current servants, if you so desire—so that you and Tom can live there comfortably whenever you wish.”
She seemed to be regarding him with some fascination. Or perhaps just doubt. “You’re not so much a solicitor as an espouser of causes,” she observed. “With boundless energy. Thank you for espousing mine.”
“Thank me if and when I achieve results,” he said briskly. If he had had papers in front of him, he would have shuffled them to cover his discomfort.
“Have you always been this driven to find the truth? Is that why you studied law?”
He shrugged. “Not until I discovered so many people twisting it or ignoring it altogether. My original fascination was with the law itself, how it grew up, how it was imposed, how to make it work for everyone who needed it.”
“But you do more than that. You don’t just practice law, you pursue justice.”
A familiar ache settled in the pit of his stomach. “I don’t always catch it.”
“When did you not?” she challenged.
He almost smiled and walked away. He had even begun to rise from his stool when he made the mistake of looking at her. The wronged young woman who trusted him with considerably less reason than he had to believe in her. Something shifted inside him, perhaps from his cool brain to his well-guarded heart, where the knowledge that she was somehow different and massively important had already begun to seep.
“At my very first try,” he said. “My brother, the most upright and honorable of men, was accused of treason, and I could not prove his innocence.”
Her eyes widened with shock.
Go on, then, run. I’ll solve your problem for you, though we need never meet again. Why should I even miss you?
“What happened to him?”
He met her gaze with defiance. “He was executed.”
“Dear God,” she whispered, her hand flying out to his. “I am so sorry.”
It was not the reaction he expected, and he doubted, cynically, that it would last. And yet it seemed he was incapable of not taking her hand in his, of not accepting her damned sympathy. Or of keeping his mouth shut.
“He was a soldier,” he blurted in a cold, hard voice, which was the only way he could tell the story. “Injured on the Peninsula, he came home and sold his commission when he was offered a position at the Foreign Office instead, an important position though relatively junior, for which he was peculiarly suited because of his experience. I shan’t go into details, but suffice it to say, information reached the French that shouldn’t have, and we lost a vital position in Spain along with many lives. The leak was traced to my brother’s office, and then a missing document was found hidden beneath his desk drawer.”
She hadn’t snatched her hand away. Instead, she was gripping his convulsively, and he couldn’t look away from their intertwined fingers.
“And suddenly, it was open season on my brother. Much as the deluge of rumors crushed you, a thousand accusations were flung at him. His impeccable military record was torn apart, every setback attributed to his machinations, every defeat to his treachery. No one remembered that he had been mentioned in dispatches several times, and the debilitating injury he had suffered for his country was brushed under the carpet. It was even said it served him right.”
“And very quickly, he was tried and hanged on the strength of that piece of paper hidden beneath his drawer.”
“I never heard such a thing,” she whispered.
“No, you wouldn’t. It was all taken care of very quickly and quietly to prevent word of the betrayal getting out, damaging the morale of the country or the army still fighting abroad. It was a small and bitter incident kept between Stephen’s office, his superiors, and the court. Stephen’s family—my brothers and I—were barely told anything. Before we could even try to defend the innocence he maintained, he was found guilty and executed.”
The tip of her tongue darted out, nervously wetting her lips, and even now, the sight tore at his breath. It was his fingers that clung to hers and not, as she clearly thought, for any reason to do with this painful tale.
“Did it ever cross your mind that he was guilty?” she asked, carefully neutral.
His lips twisted. “Perhaps. But not after I saw the document that was their evidence. It was not in his hand, had never passed his desk. And the original was exactly where it should have been.”
She frowned. “Then he was…set up to take the blame? Deliberately?”
“I would say so.”
“By whom?” she demanded.
“In my opinion…by an older, respected colleague, aided by his cousin, a young officer who just happened to be on leave and in town when this all happened. The officer was in Stephen’s regiment and began the rumors about his past, even spoke at his trial.”
“Then they are guilty?”
“In my opinion. But I have no proof and with the total secrecy surrounding the case, no means of acquiring it.”
“And so, you fight other people’s battles instead.”
“Why not? They are still alive. Nothing I ever do will bring Stephen back.”
