Her Dearest Sin

And it was only when he heard the words spoken aloud that he realized their implications. As did the viscount, of course.

“Bloody hell, Sin. Is that what this is about?” Harry asked incredulously. “You’re still playing knight errant?”

“I knew then there was something wrong. She was running away because she’s terrified of him. I saw it in her eyes when that bastard sent his horse down the incline. But still she stood up to him. And then tonight…it was as if she were someone completely different. All the life and fire and spirit had been sucked out of her. And she was even more terrified of him.”

“I’m not saying she isn’t, Sin, but…he’s her guardian. Soon to be her fiancé. They have some peculiar notions here about the sanctity of that pledge. My God, man, if they’re betrothed, she’s as good as married to him. Nothing you do can change that.”

“If they’re betrothed. They aren’t. Besides, she’s only marrying him because he’s threatening her. She as much as told me that he’s holding something over her head.”

“Her family, maybe. If it’s an arranged match, they would suffer if she cried off.”

“They deserve to suffer if they’re forcing her to marry a man she’s afraid of.”

“That’s nothing to you. Let it go. There’s not a thing you can do for her. Best for everyone concerned if you forget any of this ever happened.”

“Except I’m reminded every time I look into a mirror,” Sebastian said, his voice intense.

“Did she ask you to intervene?”

She hadn’t, of course. Her advice had been the same as Harry’s. The same Wellington would give, if Sebastian were to lay the situation before the duke.

They were guests in a foreign country, one whose customs were very different from their own. Even in England, women were compelled to marry against their wishes. Some of them managed to make a success of their arranged matches, and the others, he supposed, eventually learned to be content with their lot. He had never before thought about the role of a woman bound in marriage to a man she not only didn’t love but was frightened of.

He isn’t a man.

For some reason the words and the bitterness with which they had been uttered echoed in his brain. There were so many possible connotations for them he couldn’t possibly know what she had meant.

All he knew was that she wasn’t in love with the man to whom she was about to be betrothed. And that he was her guardian and she was afraid of him.

“Sin?”

“She didn’t ask,” he admitted shortly. “She didn’t ask me to do anything.”

There was a small silence, unbroken except for the sound of the carriage wheels on the cobblestone street.

“Leave it,” Harry urged again, his voice serious as it rarely was. “For all our sakes. This isn’t the time or the place for your damned heroics. Besides, if she don’t want rescuing—”

“Then I suppose I must leave her to her fate.”

“Exactly,” Harry said, obviously missing the sarcasm. He sounded relieved that Sebastian had been so easily persuaded to see reason. “Not really our affair, you know.”

It wasn’t. And it was always possible that in dwelling on what he thought he had seen in her eyes, Sebastian was simply looking for an excuse to seek out the man who had marked his face, despite the delicacy of their mission. A reason for doing so that would carry more weight with his conscience and his commander than his thirst for revenge.

Besides, Harry was right about Wellington’s probable reaction. Dare’s, too, he supposed. Considering the distance between them, his brother’s disapproval seemed less meaningful than it had while he was growing up.

Of course, despite Dare’s carefully cultivated cynicism, he and Ian had been the ones who had taught him the values by which he had lived his life. Honor. Love of country. Courage in battle and in sport. And a willingness to offer his strength and his skills in defense of those who were unable to defend themselves.

You have only yourselves to blame, he mentally apprised his absent brothers. And then, in spite of the depths of his genuine, almost murderous rage, his lips curved into a small, secret smile at the thought of their probable reactions to that assertion.

“I told you,” Pilar said, drawing her hairbrush slowly through the entire length of the strand of hair she held. As she did, she held her guardian’s eyes in the mirror above the dressing table, assessing the depth of his rage.

She had dismissed her maid as soon as Julián opened the door to her chamber. She had understood very well what was about to happen. There was no need to try to delay the inevitable.

“Tell me again,” he demanded.

“My head was aching from the heat and the crowd and the music,” she went on. “I sought out an anteroom for a few minutes of peace and quiet. Someplace where the smell of a hundred perspiring bodies covered in stale scent wouldn’t sicken me.”

“But you didn’t think to inform me.”

“You were attending the king. I thought it best not to disturb you.”

He caught the hairbrush on its downward stroke and wrenched it from her hand. In the same movement, he put the fingers of his other hand on her shoulder, pulling her upper body around so that she was facing him.

His thumb and forefinger fastened around her chin, lifting her face to him. And then, the brush raised menacingly in his right hand, he looked down into her eyes for a long, silent moment.

She concentrated on letting nothing of what she was feeling be reflected in her eyes or in her expression. No fear. And no defiance.

She had learned that the best—indeed, the safest—way to deal with Julián, no matter his mood, was to present him with a facade of absolute calm. She made no further attempt, therefore, to convince him that what she had told him was the truth.

“Where were you?” he asked again.

“I have told you where I was,” she said evenly. “And I have told you why I had taken refuge there. Do you wish to hear the explanation again?”

“What I wish to hear is the truth.”

He did not raise his voice, but after all these months in his control, she could no longer be lulled by the fact that he might appear to be reasonable.

He wasn’t. There was nothing at all reasonable about his anger.

She eased a breath, swallowing carefully before she opened her mouth again. “The heat and the stench in the ballroom—”

He released her chin, and then, without releasing her eyes, he hurled the hairbrush at the mirror. Not heavy enough to shatter the glass, it fell onto the dressing table, overturning several of the pots and bottles arrayed there.

One of them was a perfume, the same scent she had worn to the palace tonight. As the smell permeated the heavy air, he paced away from her, his angry stride carrying him halfway across the room before he turned.

“Was your English friend there tonight?”

Her heart leapt into her throat, beating strongly enough that she prayed he wouldn’t see it pulse beneath the thin silk of her robe de chambre.

“Was he one of those bastards with Wellington?” he demanded.

He doesn’t know, she realized in relief. If he had seen the English soldier whose face he’d ruined, the tenor of this questioning would have been very different.

If Julián had known with certainty that man had been in attendance at the ball, he would not have waited until they’d reached the house. He would have dragged her from the carriage as soon as they had left the lights of the palace behind. This confrontation would have taken place in the street and not in the privacy of her bedroom.

“My…friend?” she repeated as if puzzled by the reference.

“The gallant Englishman you met by the river.”