Wicked As Sin

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Excerpt from Wicked at the Wedding

  Also by Jillian Hunter

  Copyright

  For Paul

  Chapter One

  ENFIELD, ENGLAND

  1816

  The devil had come to take possession of Helbourne Hall. It was an event not entirely surprising considering the manor house’s recent history of wicked deed-holders. Lady Alethea Claridge could not properly discern the details of her neighbor’s undignified arrival through the cracked spyglass she held to the window. What she managed to perceive, however, brought scant comfort to one who had sought seclusion from Society’s ill-behaved gentlemen. She and the two servants who stood beside her in the long gallery of her brother’s house watched the horseman in spellbound silence.

  As she reconsidered her dramatic comparison of this person to Mephistopheles, she realized it could more kindly be said that he resembled a dark knight from the misty ages on a mission of rampage. This image might have brought more reassurance had she understood the nature of his quest.

  The tall, darkly cloaked usurper sat his beautiful black Andalusian as if leading a cavalry brigade. He thundered down the moonlit hill with an apocalyptic disregard for safety or decorum.

  Was he on the attack or on the run? She did not see anyone chasing after him.

  “The innkeeper’s wife said he’d been half-killed at Waterloo,” Mrs. Sudley, the housekeeper, said under her breath, crowding in for a closer look. “Hideous scars on his neck from an injury that would have done in a normal man.”

  “I thought you’d stopped listening to gossip,” Alethea murmured. “Furthermore, unless he is a ghost, that foolhardy display of horsemanship could not have been accomplished by a man not in the prime of his physical abilities.”

  Mrs. Sudley’s loud sniff indicated that she had taken offense. “I only listened to the village talk to learn about him for your sake, Lady Alethea.”

  “For my sake?” Alethea glanced at her askance. “What do I have to do with him?”

  Mrs. Sudley frowned. “It is vital to your welfare to know whether he will prove a kind guardian to his estate.”

  Alethea sighed at this unlikely possibility. “How many ‘kind’ guardians rob a man of his home in a card game, may I ask?”

  “He’s from London, apparently,” Mrs. Sudley added in a tone of voice that said he might as well have sprung up from the underworld.

  She smiled. “Not everyone from London—”

  A spine-tingling ululation rose into the tranquillity of the country night. Alethea glimpsed a flash of steel in the horseman’s upraised hand—not the medieval shield she would have preferred a neighbor to brandish but rather a sword. Her scalp pricked in foreboding.

  “Dear heaven,” she said, her brown eyes wide with astonishment. “It sounds as if he has given a battle cry. Is he planning to attack his own home?”

  “He’s woke up every child and dog in the village,” her stoop-shouldered footman muttered with an ominous shake of his head. “Just listen to that bedeviled howlin’. He’ll be raisin’ the dead next with his carry-on. ’Tisn’t decent. I say we lock all the doors and arm ourselves until his lordship comes home.”

  “He’ll be dead himself if he doesn’t heed where he’s going,” Alethea said in alarm. “He’s approaching the old bridge. He’ll never make it going—”

  “—like a bat out of hell,” the footman muttered with relish. “Good riddance is what I think.”

  She shot him a stern look. “Then keep those thoughts to yourself, Kemble.”

  The housekeeper lifted her blue-veined hand to her eyes. “I cannot bear to stand witness. Tell me when it’s over, and if the news is bad, be gentle in describing the manner of his death. I’ve a weak stomach for gore and such.”

  “Here,” the footman said impatiently. “There’s a warning sign standin’ right in front of that bridge unless them little ruffians from the parish orphanage took it down again. The fool can only blame himself if he breaks his neck.”

  Alethea shook her head of sable-brown curls in exasperation. “One cannot argue that. However, it will not be the horse’s fault if his rider doesn’t bother to read it. It’s beyond irresponsible.”

  She banged her fist helplessly upon the window as the reckless horseman wheeled and guided his horse into the woods that led to the bridge, the most direct route to Helbourne Hall.

  “No,” she said aloud, her oval face paling. “Stop. Stop before—”

  Of course he could not hear; how absurd to even attempt a warning. The rider had vanished from her sight into the thin stretch of trees that divided the lower lands of the two estates. She backed away from the window. She would not forgive herself if the horse took a fatal fall through the rotten bridge onto the sharp-toothed rocks below. The fact that it was not her brother’s bridge to maintain, but that of whoever happened to own Helbourne Hall, did not matter at the moment.

  “Let the dogs loose, Cooper,” she instructed the second footman, who had come running to the top of the staircase upon hearing all the commotion. “Mrs. Sudley, bring me my boots and—”

  “Shall I boil some water, my lady? And fetch a warm, clean blanket?”

  “I doubt he’s going to give birth,” Alethea said in amusement. “However, a flask of brandy would not hurt. Even if I only use it to restore my nerves.” She cast one last worried look out the window. “Perhaps he’s hoping to kill himself. I might be so inclined if I had to take responsibility for that place.”

  Helbourne Hall, the estate whose arable lands neighbored the well-tended acreage that belonged to Alethea’s brother, had been surrendered a month ago in a London gaming hall by its frivolous owner to an unidentified master. The once-grand Georgian manor seemed to have fallen under a curse. This was the fourth time in so many years that the mortgage had changed hands.

  Each successive landlord had proven more neglectful than the previous until it was a wonder the hall still existed. Alethea supposed one could not expect finer aspirations from a seasoned gamester, although she could not remember a prior master seizing his assets in so unsettling a manner.

  Her footman Kemble might be right. This nocturnal besiegement did not bode well for a slumberou
s village that held only one assembly a year.

  Nor did it foreshadow a safe future for a young lady like Alethea who wished to withdraw from the world and to heal from the invisible wounds that another man had inflicted upon her.

  Chapter Two

  Colonel Sir Gabriel Boscastle uttered a hoarse war cry for the sheer hell of it and unsheathed his sword to swipe at the bats he had disturbed in his pounding ride down the embankment. To his left rose a large Elizabethan mansion whose leaded windows shone with gilded warmth. To his far right loomed an unmajestic monster of a Georgian farmhouse with nary a candle lit to dispel its gaze of haunted gloom.

  And in his immediate path, at the bottom of the grassy hill, stood a bridge that absolutely would not bear the weight of a half-drunk knight and his sturdy Spanish horse. He tightened his knees, his arse, his spine.

  “Fine. Then we shall take it. Or not. I am not of a mind to argue. It’s your decision.”

  His mount slowed to a canter.

  The brandy Gabriel had drunk at the last inn had begun to wear off. The voice of reason he so frequently managed to subdue reared up to remind him he was no longer the brigadier of the heavy cavalry charging downhill into the French infantry on a well-trained warhorse. He was riding straight for a miskept English farmhouse. No enemy soldiers in sight.

  The Andalusian balked, signaling its refusal to jump the rickety bridge. Nor would it obey Gabriel’s belated urging to change course. He sensed by the bunching of muscled strength beneath him that he ought to prepare for a thorough bone-rattling.

  The stallion stopped, shaking its heavy tail. Gabriel gripped his knees reflexively and exhaled through his gritted teeth, managing by habit of will to hold his seat. When the swimming in his head subsided enough that he could see, he noticed that someone had propped a warning sign on a wagon beside the bridge.

  BEWARE

  HELBOURNE BRIDGE IS BAD

  As a former cavalry officer he understood the strategic importance of a bridge. Napoleon had ordered his pontonniers, his bridge builders, to construct bridges as a crucial part of his war campaign. Gabriel had helped his brigade blow up one or two to thwart a French attack.

  Trolls hid under bridges.

  So did homicidal French dragoons.

  His horse, obviously possessed of more sense at the moment than its master, refused to make the crossing. Although Gabriel was not particularly superstitious, he had learned that life frequently whispered little cautions to those who listened. A warning sign, however, was hard to ignore. It was not as if he had to cross. He’d only won this estate so that he could gamble it off as a lark.

  However, upon discovering that it was located in the village of his earliest years and youthful humiliations, he’d decided it was worth at least a visit in the hope of exorcising a few of his demons.

  There had to be another way across. He could wade through the water in his black military boots, except he didn’t fancy a soaking. He could walk around the blessed woods. He had hidden in them often enough as a boy to escape his stepfather’s whip.

  He had forgotten, though, that the outskirts of Helbourne Hall sat in the middle of a bogland. Pretty by day. Tricky at night. He supposed that at one time the peaked gables and overhanging bay windows of the farmhouse had pleased the eye.

  Now the geometric carvings of Gothic influence in peeling white plaster and black timber danced tauntingly in his line of vision. Unless…ah, the eyesore could be merely the gatehouse. And the gatehouse keeper must surely be an eccentric who had allowed a wall of thorns and weeds to reach almost to the turret as a deterrent to anyone who bothered to intrude. Peculiar though. He couldn’t imagine visiting here under any other circumstances than his own.

  He stared down into the rushing water beneath the bridge. Perhaps he shouldn’t cross it. Bridges played a symbolic role in poetry and paintings, didn’t they?

  A step to another world, another life.

  And in this case it did not appear to be a better one.

  He dismounted and slapped his horse across the rump. “What’s your opinion? I trust your judgment. Shall we make a go of it?”

  The horse stood like a memorial statue.

  Gabriel could only laugh. “Ride straight into can-nonfire and refuse to cross a country bridge? All right. There’s no arguing with you when you’re in that mood. I’ll go first. Watch.”

  He tread gingerly with bent knees upon the wooded planking. The heavy beamwork creaked but held his weight. His mount apparently remained unconvinced of a safe crossing and did not follow.

  “Look.” He stomped on a warped plankboard. “Sturdy as a whore’s bed. I—”

  A rustle of leaves, the pounding echo of hoofbeats rose into the night. Somewhere in the distance a tawny owl hooted and took flight.

  He pivoted and looked toward the woods.

  He could hear a woman’s voice, rising above the clamor. He waited in guarded curiosity, in expectation.

  It never failed to amaze him how he could be virtually tottering with one foot in the grave, the other supported by a crutch, and yet be restored to all his strength when a female appeared on the scene.

  Even his horse pricked up and swung its head at the tumult. Unfortunately, the unseen woman’s frantic shouts for her companions to hurry did not raise Gabriel’s hopes for a convivial association. He knew an upset lady when he heard one.

  What had he done, promised, this time? It seemed he’d failed to deliver. He did not think he’d been followed all the way from London, or even from the last tavern. He claimed no current lovers, or as far as he knew, any who had a score to settle to bring them this far afield. He was rootless, irresponsible, unattached.

  The boom of a blunderbuss into the trees rendered his reflections inconsequential.

  He backed against the bridge railing. It gave a menacing groan.

  A disheveled young woman burst forth from a grove of trees. “Sir, I implore you, do not—”

  He held up his hands. “Put down your weapons. You have the wrong man. I have cousins all over England. I even have brothers somewhere. We all look alike. Black hair, blue eyes—whatever misjustice has been done to you, I can only apologize, but the blame—”

  “—cross the bridge,” she finished in a forceful shout. “Don’t cross it, you babbling prattleplate. It is unsound.”

  He stared at her in a dawning amusement. Her warning went unheeded. Dear God, he did know her. That untamed cascade of curling hair, dark alluring eyes, and if that wasn’t enough to stir a man’s blood and dormant impressions of early desires, a deep bosom that her ugly cloak did not conceal, heaving in concern for him.

  A bolt of awareness slid down his back. Lady Alethea Claridge, the local earl’s only daughter and unattainable maiden of Gabriel’s boyhood fantasies. Her memory had faded to an echo he had trained himself to ignore but that persisted upon intruding at the most inconvenient times.

  Alethea had probably forgotten him long ago. Hadn’t she married the village lord’s son and moved to some nearby manor? Even if she did recognize Gabriel, he doubted she’d deign to acknowledge that she had once come to the defense of that wicked Boscastle boy.

  God bless her, he remembered all too well. His mouth curved into a bittersweet smile. The distant image of their last encounter suffused him with humiliation. Most recollections of his early past did. He’d been put into the pillory and pelted with moldy cabbages, turnips, and sheep dung.

  One of the shriveled stone-hard turnips had cut his forehead. Blood trickled into his eye. His assailants, most of them his alleged friends, laughed guiltily. Then the fancy carriage of Alethea’s sire, the third Earl of Wrexham, slowed at the market square. Her father had ordered her to stay inside in his booming voice, cautioning her not to embarrass herself and venture where she ought not.

  She did not obey, even though she was a proper young lady, presumably appalled that Gabriel’s own stepfather had dragged him to the local lockup to punish his unruly behavior.

  He’d w
atched her warily pick a path through the squashed produce to the stocks. She’d lifted her blue skirts up over her ankles and her low-heeled silver slippers. He hadn’t seen a more comely sight in his life before or since. She knelt gracefully. Gabriel heard her mother, Lady Wrexham, gasping in horror from inside the cottage.

  “I told you there was a wicked fairy in my chamber the day she was born, William.”

  “Yes. Yes,” he retorted in an impatient voice. “A thousand and one times. But what am I to do about it?”

  “Are you stupid, Gabriel Boscastle?” Alethea had whispered.

  “I don’t feel particularly academic at the moment.” He recalled looking up from that sweet tempting bosom to her face and finding that his entire body suddenly hurt when he tried to breathe. Mashed turnip and warm blood dribbled in a blob to his cheek. He felt mean and ugly. “Are you going to give me an exam?”

  “I just want to know,” she said with a directness he did not expect, “why you keep doing things to anger your stepfather when he only punishes you in the end.”

  “It isn’t your concern, is it?” he retorted, his attitude defiant. He could see a gang of clouts gathering up soggy tomatoes and rotten apples to throw. If they struck her, he would kill every one of them with his bare hands when he got free. He clenched his back teeth in frustration. He had finally met the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and he felt like a pig. “You’d better get back in the carriage,” he muttered ominously.

  “I will.” She glanced around with a disdainful glare at the grinning band until each boy and man melted back several paces. It occurred then to Gabriel that her aristocratic beauty was a more potent weapon than anything he wielded. “Shall I wipe off your face?” she whispered as she made to rise.

  “No.” His voice was fierce. “Go away, would you? I’m getting a pain in the neck looking up at you.”

  She drew a sharp breath. “Well, you look at me often enough on the way to church.”

  “Is that what you think?” He had hoped he’d been more subtle. “Well, you’re wrong. First off, I don’t go to church. Second, I admire your father’s horses. I was looking at them, not you. Everyone knows I like horses.”