Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden

“Pray do not waste your time in writing poetry, Lady Merryn. It is very bad indeed.”

Garrick had read her poems. How dared he. She blushed with mortification. She had known they were bad. She did not need confirmation.

She thrust his note into the fire and watched it curl and burn.

It was as she was about to ring the bell to call her maid to help her undress that she saw the other book. It was not one of hers but was a new copy of Mansfield Park. There was a note in that one, too.

“Your other copy was damaged beyond repair, I fear, so please accept this replacement.”

She wanted no gifts from Garrick Farne. She wanted nothing from him. She rather thought that she had made that plain in the lawyer’s office that morning. Yet he had her now because she found that she could not throw a book away. It was impossible. Anything else she would have consigned it to the fire along with the note. The book she reluctantly placed on her shelf and she tried not to think too much of the man who had given it to her.

For the second night in a row she lay awake.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE FLEET PRISON was not as Merryn had anticipated. Blessed with a lively imagination, she had thought that it would be infested with rats, the walls running with water, the inmates screaming in mad frenzy to be let out. It was none of those things. The floors were swept clean, the walls were dry and it was very quiet.

The unexpected trip to Mr. Churchward’s office the previous day had delayed Merryn’s plans but she was still determined to push ahead with them and seek out the doctor who had attended the duel between her brother and Garrick. He was the only witness she could find. She was sure he had been bought off and she was intent on uncovering what had really happened. Her encounter with Garrick the previous night had not dissuaded her. In some odd way it had made her even more determined to learn the truth. For now she was fighting against herself as well as Garrick, against her helpless attraction to a man whom she detested. She felt naive and stupid to have such a conflict of emotions, angry with Garrick, incensed with herself.

It was also pleasant, Merryn thought, to escape from the house in Tavistock Street as well, even if a visit to the Fleet might not be everyone’s idea of a trip out. Garrick Farne’s offer had caused deep divisions between her and her sisters. Merryn was barely speaking to Tess, who seemed incapable of understanding her rejection of Garrick’s gift as blood money and was already merrily planning all kinds of expenditure. Merryn thought of Tess’s greed, and tasted bitterness in her mouth.

That morning Joanna had agreed to take the money, too. Merryn found it easier to excuse Joanna because she knew she had her reasons; Joanna was deeply devoted to Fenners, not because she loved the house and the countryside, as Merryn did, but because it was their last link to their father and to Stephen. And Joanna and Alex were poor, unlike Tess, the rich widow. Alex had an estate in the Highlands of Scotland that ate money rather than generated it and he had his cousin Chessie, who was currently staying with relatives in Edinburgh, to provide with a dowry. So Merryn could understand why Joanna would accept Garrick Farne’s offer, even as her sore heart rebelled against her sister’s pragmatism.

Dr. Southern’s cell was off the third-floor gallery. He was sitting alone, reading, when Merryn arrived. The light was poor and he was squinting. He looked like a plant that had grown in the dark: spindly, gray-faced and weak. There was a bottle at his elbow with a clear liquid in it and a stench of alcohol in the cell that hit Merryn like a wall. When the jailer ushered her in—she had paid him six shillings for the privilege—Southern looked up and his pale eyes rested on her gently but without focus. There was nowhere to sit other than the pallet bed, so Merryn knelt beside his chair on the hard stone floor.

“Dr. Southern?” she said. “My name is Merryn Fenner.” She hesitated. She had been hoping that the doctor would know her name but there was no recognition in his face. So she had no choice—she had to plow on with what she had come for.

“You may remember my brother, Stephen,” she said. “Stephen Fenner?”

Even before he answered she knew it was hopeless and her heart swooped down to her feet. Southern’s gaze slid away from hers blankly. He reached for the bottle.

“Stephen?” he muttered.

“Stephen Fenner,” Merryn repeated. “You were the doctor present at the duel when he died.”

“Duel?” The doctor was fumbling with the bottle, tilting it to his lips. Some of the liquid ran down over his chin and splashed on his shirt. It smelled sweet but sharp at the same time, catching in Merryn’s throat.

“I remember no duel.”

“Twelve years ago,” Merryn said. “Stephen Fenner.” She felt desperate. There had been two seconds at the duel, if duel it had been. One was dead, the other thousands of miles away, beyond reach. This man had been the only other witness present. Other than Garrick Farne himself …

“Please try to remember,” she whispered.

“No duel,” the doctor said and for a moment Merryn’s hopes soared, until she realized that he was simply unable to remember anything. He was shaking his head, a little fretful, a little lost. His hand shook; the bottle nudged the book on the table and it fell into Merryn’s lap.

There was a bookplate inside with a coat of arms, a mailed fist and the motto: Ne M’oubliez. Remember me. Merryn did not need to see the strong writing, the initials GF, to tell her whose book it was. She knew the motto well. It seemed appropriate.

She shivered. So Garrick Farne had been here before her. Had he paid for Southern’s silence, with the gin in the bottle perhaps? For surely the doctor was going to give her no help. He was too drunk, too forgetful, too conveniently beyond reach even though he was sitting before her. For a second she felt an equal mix of fury and despair. Garrick had been a step ahead of her again. Was she forever to be outwitted, running after his shadow?

“The Duke of Farne visits you,” she said lightly, placing the book back on the table.

“Often,” the doctor said. His hands shook as he drew the book close in what was almost a protective gesture. “He bought me out of here,” he added.

Merryn frowned. “Garrick Farne paid your debts?”

“I only fell into more.” Southern was nodding gently, a whimsical smile on his face. “I try. I fail. I remember Stephen Fenner,” he added, surprisingly. “He was a scoundrel. No good. No good at all.”

Merryn smothered the instinctive protest that leaped to her lips. It was true that some people had considered Stephen a rogue. He had been feckless, careless with the money they did not possess, a gambler, a drinker. She knew that he had argued with their father over his debts. She had heard them on the nights when she had crept downstairs after bedtime. Sometimes they had left the study door open and a crack of light had crept across the hall carpet and the words had spilled out, too, angry words between father and son. She, perched on the stairs in the darkness, had heard it all. But each and every time Stephen had smoothed matters out with his generosity and his winning charm. The servants had shaken their heads over his conduct but they had been smiling even as they deplored his bad behavior. And even if Stephen had been the greatest wastrel in the world it did not mean that he deserved to die.

“I am sorry you remember him so,” she said stiffly. She got to her feet. Even after only a few moments kneeling on the stone she felt cold and sore, her heart colder still. There was nothing for her here.

The jailer met her at the door. This was a different man from the one who had admitted her. He had a thin face and a greedy gleam in his eyes.

“That’ll be six shillings,” he said, dangling the keys in front of Merryn’s nose.

“But I paid six shillings to get in,” Merryn objected.

“And now you pay to get out,” the jailer said. “Unless you prefer to stay here with him.” He jerked his head toward Dr. Southern, who was gulping gin from the bottle like a man possessed by the urge to find oblivion.

“I don’t have the money,” Merryn said.

It was evidently the wrong thing to say. The jailer took her arm in a grip that felt rather firmer than she would have liked. Suddenly the Fleet did not look quite as pleasant as Merryn had thought, a dark, cold, unfriendly, and alien place far removed from the world she normally frequented. She tried to wrench her arm from the jailer’s grasp but he held her fast and leaned closer. He smelled stale and his breath was foul.

“Listen, miss, it’s like this. Everything costs.” His gaze appraised her, lingering on the lace at her collar, the swell of her breasts beneath the line of her coat. “Unless you want to pay another way—”

“How much?”

The voice was lazy, authoritative. If Merryn had not heard the undertone of steel in it she would have sworn he was indifferent. She closed her eyes. Garrick Farne, here. Well, of course. He would be. This was a cat-and-mouse game they were embarked upon. Garrick would have made sure that Southern was too drunk to remember anything useful and then to make absolutely sure, he would have waited outside the cell while she interviewed the doctor. She was sure he had been listening to every word and that he had paid a great deal more than six shillings for the privilege of spying on her.

He did not look like her idea of a spy, hiding in corners, listening at doors. For a start he looked too elegant, in a casual single-breasted morning coat, breeches and boots with a very high polish. Merryn thought he should be out riding, giving vent to all the banked-down energy and power she sensed in him. Their eyes met. He smiled. It was not an encouraging smile and Merryn did not for one second feel reassured. She thought that it would probably suit Garrick’s purposes very well for her to be clapped up in the Fleet for a while. She looked at his hard expression and just for a moment she was afraid.

“You can buy her out for ten shillings, my lord,” the guard said.

“It was six shillings a moment ago,” Merryn said hotly. “And I do not even owe it!”

Garrick’s dark, sardonic gaze considered her. “What are you in for? House-breaking?”

“I’m not a prisoner!” Merryn said.

“You surprise me,” Garrick said, “given your penchant for crime.”

Merryn blushed. “I am trying to get out.”

Garrick took out his pocketbook. He looked at the jailer, raised a brow.

“Twelve shillings, your grace,” the man said, estimating Garrick’s rank upward and the sum of money accordingly. “And that’s a bargain.”

“I am not sure that it is,” Garrick murmured, his gaze bringing the hotter color up into Merryn’s face. “Believe me, you should be paying me to take her off your hands not vice versa.”