Gayle Wilson - Her Dearest Sin

“You’re a fool,” she said, pushing more strongly against his chest.

Suddenly his hands closed over her wrists once more, and he pulled her roughly away from the tree. Then, maintaining his hold with only his right hand, he began to drag her along behind him. Again she twisted and turned her captured arm, finally using her free hand to strike at his shoulder. He ignored the repeated blows.

“If I had a weapon, I swear I would kill you,” she said.

“Steal one,” he suggested. “You seem to be very good at that.”

At that same moment she realized he had been dragging her toward the palace rather than away from it. She stopped the barrage of ineffectual blows, trying to make sense of both that destination and his words.

By the time she had realized they were too reminiscent of that terrible reality to be coincidental, he had already accomplished what he had brought her so dangerously near the palace to do. The light from the torches on the balcony above them flickered over his face, revealing the scar Julián had slashed there almost a year ago.

“We meet again, señorita,” he said. “And this time, I believe the advantage is mine.”

There was a definite satisfaction in watching the slow dilation of her eyes as she recognized him, Sebastian decided. It was not enough to make up for what she had done, but it was something.

“Who are you?” she whispered, her tongue moistening lips that had not seemed dry as they responded to his kiss only seconds before.

Kissing her had been a mistake. One he freely admitted. He had never been able to determine in his own mind what he would do if he found this girl. After the sensation of her mouth trembling beneath his, carrying out any of the punishments he’d devised during the past eleven months would be an impossibility.

“Sebastian Sinclair, señorita. I would add ‘at your service,’ but considering what happened the last time I attempted that…”

He deliberately let the sentence trail. Her eyes again traced the line of the scar, and he felt the muscles of his stomach tighten as he was forced to endure their scrutiny.

“I never meant that to happen,” she said.

“His name,” Sebastian demanded.

Her eyes found his, searching them.

“No,” she whispered.

“Someone will tell me.”

“Let them. Then, if you aren’t a fool, you’ll hear the name and let it disappear from your memory. What he did—”

“Requires retribution,” he interrupted softly.

“If you attack him, you’ll disgrace your king, and Julián will still kill you.”

“Julián?”

“Colonel Julián Delgado.” Despite her avowal that she wouldn’t tell him, she enunciated the name deliberately, almost defiantly, as if it had weight and substance. “A man more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

“A man,” Sebastian mocked. “Nothing more and nothing less. He’ll bleed and then he will die. Like any other man.

He fought to control the same rage he had had to conquer when he’d seen her making her way across the ballroom. He had followed her out into the darkness because, once he had found her, this confrontation was inevitable.

He had sworn he would know the name of the man who had disfigured him. Now that he did…

“He isn’t a man,” she said, the words low enough that for a moment he believed he must have misheard them.

The silence, broken only by the music from the palace above them, expanded as he considered what she had said. And, far more troubling, the tone in which she had said it.

“Then…what is he?” he asked, touched, in spite of his long-held anger, by an almost superstitious dread.

A sudden noise from the balcony above their heads caused them both to turn. Three men, one carrying a torch, were descending the steps that led out into the garden. The flame streamed behind them like a banner. At the sight, the girl shrank back into the shadows of the building, drawing Sebastian with her.

“You mustn’t be found here. Not with me.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Sebastian said.

He wasn’t, despite that almost preternatural chill her characterization had created. Finding this man was something he had thought about every day since the bastard had laid open his cheek.

“You should be,” she said. “If nothing else, be afraid of what he will do to me if he finds you here.”

“Whatever tenderness I once harbored for damsels in distress was destroyed the day you allowed him to do this,” he said, touching his cheek with the tips of his finger. He could feel the rough texture of the scar beneath them.

“I allowed?”

“Your intervention made it possible.”

“My intervention allowed you to escape with your life.” She corrected his version of those events vehemently.

“Your intervention allowed him to escape.”

His eyes tracked the path of the torch as it was carried through the garden. Although what he had told her was true—he wasn’t afraid of the man she called Julián—he also wasn’t stupid enough to be caught off guard by him.

Occasionally the searchers would call her name, but they were careful to keep their voices low so that the sound wouldn’t carry to the palace. Apparently, her guardian had no desire to call attention to her disappearance.

“Whatever you choose to believe about that day…” she began.

The pause brought his eyes back to her face, long enough to realize that hers were again examining the scar.

“Whatever I believe?” he prompted caustically.

“You must never doubt that Julián would have had no compunction about killing you. To him, you are far less important than the stallion you shot.”

“And what are you to him?”

“He is my guardian. And soon…soon he will become my fiancé.”

For some reason, the word created a sickness in the pit of his stomach. Almost the same reaction he had felt that day by the river when he’d considered the possibility that the horseman might be her husband.

“Do you love him?”

“What a child you are,” she said, her voice touched with the same bitterness he had heard then.

“Does he love you?”

She turned her head, watching the flame from the torch move in and out among the trees.

“Marriages like ours seldom have their basis in love. Nor do they in England,” she added.

“So his actions that day were the result of…jealousy?” he asked. “Pride of possession?”

“Does it matter?”

“I find that it matters a great deal to me.”

“He’s a proud man. I had humiliated him by running away. At first, he believed you’d helped me.”

“At first?”

“If he had really believed that, he would have killed you no matter what I said.”

“And I have you to thank for convincing him otherwise? Are you expecting my gratitude?” he mocked.

“I’m expecting you will continue to play whatever game you are playing until he finds us here and kills you. Other than that, I assure you I have very little expectation of anything.”

The bitterness was there again, more open than before. Despite the anger he had cherished toward this girl during those long months, something about her claim touched a nearly forgotten chord of chivalry.

The same emotion he’d felt the first time he had encountered her, he reminded himself. It had proven to be misplaced.

“No one can force you to marry him,” he found himself saying, despite the too-clear remembrance of the last time he had attempted to intervene on her behalf. And of the price he had paid, a price he would carry to his grave, for that attempt.

She laughed, the sound abruptly cut off. She turned, again watching the flame stream through the darkness.