IfHe’sSinful Read online

  “Really? You can get a title for that?”

  “Oh, aye. Do not forget that some very high titles have been given to people simply because some king or prince begot them on the wrong side of the blanket. Compensation for the cuckolded husband, I suppose.” She set the bread dough in a bowl and draped a cloth over it before moving to the sink to wash her hands. “So much anger,” she murmured.

  “At the Hutton-Moores’?” Penelope nodded and Artemis grinned. “So that is why you arrived here far earlier than you usually do.”

  “It is. Clarissa and Charles were so consumed by their anger, they did not notice me slip away.” She frowned as she dried her hands. “I think they may have threatened Radmoor.”

  “With what?”

  “There was something said about his father’s debts. I think Charles may have gained hold of some of them, a lot of them, and now holds the markers over him like a sword of Damocles. Think, instead of a lot of men owed smaller sums, many of them willing to take payments or wait, Radmoor now faces one man who could bring him to his knees by simply demanding immediate payment of many debts.”

  “Clever,” murmured Artemis and shrugged at his sister’s scowl. “I did not say it was right, just clever. Evilly so.”

  She shook her head at his weak attempt to slither out of a scolding for his remark. “I also think they put the notice of the betrothal in the papers before there was any actual proposal made. Clarissa said something about the ring being an insult, one delivered because they had rushed the man.” She gathered up a small basket of apples that had wintered over very well in storage, sat down at the table, and began to peel them. “It is the why of such machinations that I cannot understand.”

  “They want those titles in the family. Titles that actually carry a little power and respect.”

  “Perhaps. Charles would benefit through Clarissa. I fear Radmoor is quite firmly trapped. He is badly in need of money. He certainly does not have what would be needed if Charles called in those debts. It is sad when fathers decimate fortunes, leaving their families to suffer. From the way Radmoor’s father behaved, I have to think that his parents did not have a happy marriage and the man then bequeathed his son the need to endure the same.”

  Artemis frowned as he snatched a slice of apple. “It would seem to me that some of the aristocrats do not want to give up anything. Not their fancy clothes, not their fancy carriages and fine horses, not the balls and the opera.”

  Penelope nodded. “That is some of it. They would rather plunge themselves into a miserable marriage that will last a lifetime just to be able to keep buying embroidered waistcoats from whatever tailor is au courant. I must say that, if Radmoor thinks Clarissa will give up even one small luxury while he repairs his fortunes and his lands, he has failed to see her clearly. Sadly, Clarissa is the sort of woman who will constantly remind him that she was the one who pulled him out of debt. Nay, I change my mind. The truly sad thing is that I think he would do his utmost to be a good and true husband, but Clarissa has no interest in that. She will turn what could be a good marriage into the same miserable, faithless union too many in society endure. The same sort of marriage his parents had.” Penelope sighed and stared at the bowl full of apple slices in front of her. “I think that is what troubles me most of all. She will not make him happy.”

  “Do you care for him that much then?” Artemis asked quietly.

  “I think I might. He has fascinated me from the first moment I saw him. But I do not have what he needs. Whatever inheritance was left to me is in Charles’s hands and I doubt much of it, if any, will remain when I reach the age to take control of it. What little I get now, and that is given most reluctantly, is spent here. It would not help Radmoor anyway.”

  “But you would make him happy.”

  “Would I? He has three sisters, a mother, two aunts, and two brothers to support. If he loses even one of his properties, there goes a dower for a sister or a living for a brother. If he married a woman like me, one without a fortune, he would soon see the loss of one property after another and his sisters denied their seasons and thus a good and prosperous match. Two of his sisters are already past the age when they should have made their debut due to the family’s lack of funds. I think all that loss would soon bring bitterness to the door.”

  “So it is not just clothes and carriages.”

  “Not with Radmoor. It is the futures of his siblings and the comfort of his mother and aunts.”

  “Pen! That fool what got hisself betrothed to the bitch is here! And he has brought four of his friends.”

  Penelope stared at Artemis in open-mouthed shock as that blunt announcement bellowed out in young Paul’s choirboy voice echoed throughout the house. She recognized the words as her own but how had Paul heard them? Then she realized that Lord Ashton had undoubtedly heard them as well and groaned. After giving Artemis a fierce scowl for laughing, she buried her face in her hands.

  “Pe—ne—lo—pe!”

  “I will be there in a moment!” she yelled back. “Show them into the parlor!” She then looked at a cackling Artemis in horror. “I just bellowed like a costermonger.”

  “Stiffen your spine, sister. Clean the flour off yourself, set up a pretty tea tray. And go to greet your guests.”

  “But—”

  “If you feel any embarrassment creep up on you, do try to remember where you last saw that rogue.”

  “Oh.” She thought about that for a moment and then shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was naked.”

  After glaring at her brother, who was laughing so hard he was in grave danger of falling off his chair, Penelope hurried to clean up and prepare a tea tray. Five gentlemen were waiting in her parlor. This, she thought, was probably going to be very embarrassing.

  Ashton stared at the angelic-looking little boy who had opened the door. He could swear that the child’s bellow was still echoing through the house. The badly muffled laughter of his friends told him he had not been mistaken in what he had just heard. When the child yelled out Penelope’s name and the woman yelled back, Ashton was still too shocked to be surprised.

  “Come in,” said the boy. “I am Paul, cousin Orion’s by-blow. The parlor is this way.”

  Following the boy, Ashton closely studied his surroundings. It was a spacious house and very clean. The furnishings in the parlor the boy led them into were of a good quality, but slightly worn. Ashton recognized two of the boys who had rescued Penelope playing chess at a table in the far corner of the large room. The looks they cast his way were not friendly ones even though their murmured greetings were very polite. Over his head he could hear what sounded like a small army moving around.

  “You know them,” the boy said and pointed at Stefan and Darius, “but I do not know you.”

  Ashton introduced his friends to the boy as they all found seats in the room on what proved to be surprisingly comfortable settees and chairs. They were the type of seats that were often banished to the attics and replaced by spindly, dainty chairs a man had to sit in with great care. He looked up from examining the once expensive but now worn rug beneath his feet to find the little cherub named Paul sitting on the table set between the facing settees, looking at him with an unsettling intensity.

  “Did they really see you naked in a whorehouse?” Paul asked in his sweet voice, his dark blue eyes wide and filled with innocence.

  The heat of an unaccustomed blush warmed Ashton’s cheeks. He did not even bother to send a repressive frown toward the two other boys, knowing it would do nothing to stifle their laughter. He did, however, glare at his friends, who were doing a poor job of hiding their amusement. Facing the little boy again, Ashton wondered if the child was truly as sweet as he appeared to be. There was a glint in the child’s beguiling eyes that made Ashton think Paul might not understand the full implications of what he was saying, but knew enough to know it was appallingly audacious.

  “I was no
t expecting company at that time,” he said.

  “Are you really as big as a horse?”

  “Paul!”

  Penelope marched over to the table as all the men stood up. Paul hastily jumped off it and she set down a tray full of biscuits, fruit, and small cakes. She silently thanked the Fates for inspiring her to indulge in a frenzied bout of cooking. This visitation was going to be awkward enough without having been caught out with nothing to offer her guests. She then frowned at Paul, who was looking far too angelic, a sure sign that he was causing trouble. Considering what she had just overheard him say, however, she decided to reprimand him later. It was not a conversation she wished to have before five gentlemen of the ton.

  “If you boys would be so kind as to leave us now, I would be grateful,” she said. “And tell the others not to trouble themselves in sneaking down here. I intend to shut the door.” She could tell by the way all three boys frowned that they knew any chance of eavesdropping was gone. The parlor doors were very thick.

  “Did you give them all the cakes?” asked Paul.

  “Nay. Now, please, away with you.”

  A quick glance toward the doorway showed Penelope that the other boys were already downstairs and peering around the edge of the door, obviously having slipped free of their tutor Septimus’s guard. She was just about to tell them to leave when Artemis made them scatter. He brought in the pots of coffee and tea, bowed to the men, and then left, herding the other three slow-moving boys in front of him. The moment he closed the doors, she urged the men to sit down and busied herself serving each man some tea or coffee, hoping the mundane chore would calm her before there was any attempt at conversation.

  Each man introduced himself, bowed, and kissed her hand before seating himself, and accepting his refreshments. Penelope became more and more alarmed with each introduction even as she attempted to note one thing about each man in order to remember him. Cornell Fincham, tall, fair-haired, and handsome, whom she knew to be the third son of a royal duke. Brant Mallam, the earl of Fieldgate, a nearly beautiful man with dark hair and dark eyes. Whitney Parnell, the baron of Ryecroft, an apparently flirtatious and jovial fellow until one looked into his steel gray eyes. Victor Chesney, the baron of Fisherton, who looked almost bland with his brown hair and hazel eyes, until he smiled. And then, of course, Radmoor, the viscount who made her heart clench with want. Five handsome bachelors all seated in her parlor. The matchmaking mamas of London would hang her if they ever learned of this meeting.

  By the time she took the only place left available near the table, Penelope’s stomach was tied up in knots. The fact that this seat was next to Radmoor only made it worse. After all, he had seen her very nearly naked and she had seen him gloriously naked. The rules of polite society she had been taught did not cover such a situation. Nor had it instructed her in how to carry on polite conversation with five men who knew she had been tied to a bed in a brothel.

  Ashton finished a delicious lemon cake and noticed a few smudges of flour in Penelope’s hair and on one sleeve of her gown. For reasons he could not begin to understand, he thought such dishevelment only made her more adorable. “Did you make these?” he asked, waving a hand toward all the teacakes and biscuits and trying to break the weighted silence they were all locked into.

  “Ah, aye. I mean yes, I did,” she replied. “I like to cook. It helps me think. A cook I know well made the raspberry tarts, however. She is always sending food here, but the people she works for do not know that. They will not miss what she sends,” she hastily added.

  “The secret is safe with us,” said Lord Mallam as he helped himself to another raspberry tart.

  “Why have I never seen you at Hutton-Moore House?” Ashton asked, unable to play any more polite games, suddenly desperate for some answers to all the questions swirling in his mind.

  Penelope silently repeated every curse she knew, knowing she would be ashamed later at how long that list was. It was apparent that Radmoor now knew exactly who she was, but she grasped at the very small chance that she could still persuade him that he was wrong. “Why should you have?”

  “Your last name is Wherlocke.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It says so on the front of this house. There is a placard by the door that says WHERLOCKE WARREN.”

  “Oh. I had forgotten about that. My cousin Orion put it up.” And she intended to kick him soundly for that the next time she saw him. “His idea of a little jest. It was either that or the BY-BLOW BUNGALOW.”

  Ashton did not know whether to be shocked or to laugh, and noticed his friends suffering the same torn sentiments. “This is where your family houses its…” He hesitated, struggling for the right word, one that would not cause insult, and then noticed that she had the glint of mischief in her eyes that he had seen in young Paul’s.

  “Naturals?” she said and grinned when Ashton’s friends laughed. Even Ashton smiled. “Aye, it is, but it was not exactly planned that way. I fear my father was not faithful to my mother, hence Artemis and Stefan. When Mama married again, her new husband refused to house the boys, a refusal made only after the marriage was done, of course. My mother did not have the will or, mayhap, the true desire to fight the man on the matter and so Aunt Olympia gave me this house. It was sitting empty, you see, for it was no longer in an area that people considered completely respectable. I moved my brothers into this house. Then, one by one, the others began to arrive, starting with Darius, Uncle Argus’s boy by a mistress who decided to get married and could not take the child with her. Argus bought this house from Olympia and signed it over to my brothers, and me, with himself as tentative head of the household until I come of age. There are ten boys here now and their fathers do their best to help with the money needed to raise them.”

  “Should they not be at school?”

  “They attend when there is the money to send them but a tutor is usually all that can be afforded.”

  “And you live here? Is that why I have not seen you at Hutton-Moore House?”

  “Nay, I do not live here. Charles and Clarissa do not know about this house as far as I know. I come here when I can. Fortunately, that is quite often. Until I am five and twenty I must stay with the Hutton-Moores.”

  Penelope decided the men did not need to know that she stayed because she feared it was the only way to be certain she could still claim that house when it legally became hers. Nor did they need to know that the will said when she was five and twenty or married. As far as she knew, the house her stepbrother and sister claimed for themselves was all that was left of the riches her mother had brought to her second marriage. There was still a chance she could lose that, too, and be left with nothing more than a tiny annuity, but she held out the stubborn hope that Charles could not actually steal that away as she suspected he had stolen everything else.

  “You still have not answered the question as to why I have never seen you there,” Ashton pressed.

  “S’truth, none of us can recall seeing you anywhere,” added Lord Mallam. “At not one society function.”

  “Have never even heard you mentioned of by the Hutton-Moores,” said Baron Fisherton. “Yet you are a Hutton-Moore.”

  “Only in name,” Penelope said, realizing that these men had obviously gone ahunting for information about her. “Only because the old baron felt it would make it easier for him to get his hands on all my father left behind if he adopted me. The pretense that I was one of them died a swift death when the old baron and my mother were buried. I was banished to the attics and nearly forgotten. That is why I can come here so often and no one knows. Or cares. As long as I keep out of sight, they do not trouble themselves with me. I rather prefer that arrangement now.”

  She smiled faintly when she saw how shocked the men looked. “I keep informed of all that is going on in my house through a few of the servants and, I blush to admit, eavesdropping. The house has a great many little nooks and passages the Hutton-Moores know nothing about. For reasons
she never explained to me, my mother never told her husband about them and ordered me to keep them secret as well.”

  “And that is how you learned I was betrothed to Clarissa or from the paper?” asked Ashton.

  “From Charles and Clarissa, but I did not really have to eavesdrop to learn that. Things got quite, er, loud after you left the house this morning, Lord Radmoor.” And the anger of her stepsiblings had so filled the air she had felt choked by it, but that was not something she could tell these men.

  Ashton grimaced and then stared at her in surprise. “You knew who I was that night.”

  “I did.” She struggled to subdue a blush but a slight heat in her cheeks told her she was only partly successful.

  “Nick me! Why did you not say something?”

  “That potion did rather dull my wits, m’lord, and I did make a fumbling effort to explain.” She frowned. “Are you here because you fear I will tell Clarissa about what happened that night?” Penelope was almost certain that Clarissa knew what had happened to her, all except for the fact that Radmoor would be the man sent to her. It was Charles’s part in it all that she was not yet certain of.

  “No, I…” Ashton rubbed a hand over his neatly queued hair. “I am not sure why I have come. To apologize?” He sighed when she shook her head and murmured, “no need.” “No? I was somewhat condescending when you tried to tell me what had happened to you. In truth, I think it was the shock of finding out who you are and hoping you would prove my butler wrong that brought me hying over here. My butler was the one who gave us the information on the Wherlockes,” he explained when she looked at him in confusion. “Do you know how, or rather, why you ended up there?”

  “To begin with, I walked home from here at a later hour than usual, and alone. After years of doing so, I fear I had grown, well, overconfident. As for the why? Who can know? I certainly cannot guess.” Penelope had a few very strong suspicions but no proof, so decided it was best to keep those suspicions to herself for now, especially since the man questioning her was now engaged to one of her suspects.