Lady of Sin by Madeline Hunter Page A

Mardenford was in love with her. She did not see that this brother wanted her in a way the law permitted no brother, even one through marriage.
    “You were hardly without family before. The bond of the Duclaircs is famous.”
    “I know my good fortune in the loyalty and love of my brothers and sister. This is different, however. Peaceful. I grew up in a family full of high drama. When I was a girl, there were scandals and heart-wrenching sorrows and big secrets. They thought that I was too young to know, but I knew everything. I love my brothers and sister, but that world was a stormy sea, throwing my little boat hither and fro. In comparison, my husband’s family was the most placid lake.”
    “I expect the contrast had an appeal.”
    She smiled with a girlish chagrin. The way her lower lip quivered had his heart humming with recognition and excitement.
    Damn, the similarities were undeniable and alarming. He had spent three days tossing them over in his mind, convincing himself he was imagining things. But now . . .
    “Oh, yes, the quiet, the stability, had enormous appeal. It first attracted the coward in me. Later I appreciated that there was more there than the perfect reflection of a perfect order on that unrippled surface. The lake was placid, but that does not mean it was shallow.”
    Her expression became reflective and private, just as it had the afternoon in her drawing room when the memories overcame her. She was not only speaking of the world into which she had married. She was also referring to her husband, and her marriage.
    A profound empathy entered him, just as it had at the party. The woman that night had not spoken much, but her whispers had alluded to another life and another time and an old love.
    An intimacy wrapped them, as it had in her salon. She did not look at him this time, so he was not sure she experienced it too. He did not reach for her again, although he wanted to.
    He was glad she had found that quiet lake as a girl. He knew something about the waves that had buffeted her little boat, and could imagine how they seemed to threaten her.
    In setting her anchor in that lake, she had found safety. She alone of the Duclaircs had remained untouched by scandal. She alone was received in all the best houses. Such things mattered to most people, especially in the world to which she had been born.
    He made a decision. He had no stomach for this investigation, and would not have pursued it at all except for the way those boy’s eyes haunted him. If Charlotte saw no resemblance, that would be the end of it.
    If she
truly
saw none, that was. He would know if she lied.
             
    Nathaniel stepped out of the carriage and scowled at the old brick house with broken, chipped shutters. A lot of noise came from within. An inebriated woman sat at an open window right in front of them, grinning in sodden, private mirth.
    “It is a flash house,” he muttered. He shot Charlotte a glare of exasperation. “I
told
you I should bring the boy to you.”
    “I am aware of what you
told
me. Is it likely he is in here?”
    Nathaniel had paid a costermonger a guinea for the location of this house. According to the informant, Finley had bought stolen property here, and had a partnership with the bawd whose women used the upper floors.
    Charlotte had been in St. Giles rookery before, but she had never entered a flash house. The government insisted they did not exist, but everyone knew they did. A combination of gin house, brothel, hideout, and cheap lodgings, there were hundreds of them in London, all little centers of crime that flourished with impunity in neighborhoods like this.
    Nathaniel looked up and down Bainbridge Street. Charlotte assumed that with his height he could see more than she could. From her vantage point at the carriage window it was a sea of people in poor clothing, making so much noise it was a wonder the din in the house could be heard.
    His survey did not improve his humor. “I