Gayle Wilson - Her Dearest Sin

“You are a child,” she said again, her voice carefully lowered. “And now, you and I will return separately to the palace, and we will act as if none of what happened tonight has occurred. If you see me or Julián again while you are in Madrid, I would advise you to pretend that you don’t.”

Before he could react, she slipped past him. Staying within the shadows cast by the building, she made her way to the foot of the stairs leading up to the balcony. As she stepped onto the bottom one, she turned her head, looking back to where he was standing, hidden by the shadows. One hand on the balustrade, she hesitated, her face illuminated by the flambeaux above her.

Their light glinted off the track of tears on her cheek. Then, lifting the hem of her gown, she began to climb, eventually disappearing from his sight.

“You’re sure it was the same girl,” Harry asked when they had finally achieved the privacy of the coach and could talk openly.

Sebastian had returned to the ballroom only a short time after the torchbearer and his helpers had left the garden, but he hadn’t seen the girl again. His eyes had searched the perspiring mob gathered under the glow of a thousand candles, but neither of the faces he sought had been among them.

“The instant I saw her.”

“It’s been nearly a year,” the viscount reminded him hopefully.

“I’m not likely to have forgotten either of them. Besides, she didn’t bother to deny it.”

He hadn’t told Harry the whole. There was no reason to repeat everything that had been said—and done—during those few moments he and the girl had spent together in the garden.

Sebastian couldn’t explain to his own satisfaction why he had kissed her. He was unwilling to try to produce an answer to his friend’s inevitable questions about his motives in doing so.

“It wasn’t the girl who cut your face, Sin,” Harry reminded him. “Actually, from what you said—”

“She knocked my pistol aside. If she hadn’t—”

“If she hadn’t,” Wetherly interrupted reasonably, “we would more than likely have found you dead with a ball in your back.”

“And you believe I prefer this?” Sebastian asked savagely, touching the mark on his face.

The resulting silence lasted long enough that he knew with regret there could no longer be any pretense after tonight that he didn’t care about the scar. Of course, this was Harry, who knew him well enough to understand the purpose behind that long charade.

“It was checkmate,” Sebastian said stubbornly, trying to cling to his anger, “until she interfered. He could have ordered them to shoot me, but I would still have taken the whoreson to hell with me.”

“Let it go, Sin,” Harry advised gently. “Pursuing him won’t change what happened. It won’t change anything at all. You must know how Wellington will feel about your carrying out some personal vendetta while we’re here. Especially with the delicacy of his mission.”

“Which everyone knows is doomed to failure. I know his name, Harry. I can hunt the bastard down and—

“And do what?” Wetherly interrupted. “Kill him? What will that change?”

“At least it will free her,” Sebastian said.

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.