One Night of Sin by Gaelen Foley

on the air—the dinner basket waiting for her on the round pedestal table. Her eyes lit up and she strode over to it without hesitation, tearing away the checked cloth covering the basket.
    She oohed and aahed over each wonderful delicacy that she removed from it—bread and a hunk of good Cheddar, a jar of pureed soup, cold sliced meats neatly wrapped in cheesecloth, a bevy of slightly warm dry puddings, two peach tarts, strawberries, even a bottle of champagne. She found the silverware, napkins, and fancy china bowls and small dishes that Alec had left on the table, and quickly began fixing a plate for each of them, ravenously sampling everything.
    With their feast laid out before her, she was tempted to devour it single-handedly, but she supposed that would have been inexcusably ill-mannered. Pained with waiting, she glanced toward the bedroom, but Alec was still in the dressing room changing into dry clothes.
    Curbing her hunger, she decided to take a discreet peek around. Lifting the candelabra off the table, she wandered across the large main room, admiring his Old Masters and his Grecian urns with their beguiling, elongated figures so intricately worked. Trailing her hand along the scrolled arm of the luxurious Roman couch upholstered in striped satin, she approached the French doors to the sitting room and nudged one open, but when she lifted the candelabra and peered inside, she was taken aback to find the parlor bare.
    No furniture. No rug. Just a lonely expanse of parquet floor and an empty picture rail that ran the circumference of the room beneath the ornamental frieze. She frowned and closed the door again. As she turned around slowly, perusing the main room again, she began to see the empty spaces where she realized more pieces of his spare, leggy, claw-foot furniture had once stood, though they had been well-camouflaged by a white statue here, a deftly placed potted fig tree over there. On the walls, she now detected slightly darker rectangles where the silk wall-hangings had not faded from the sunlight because they had previously been covered up by now vanished pieces of art.
    Well, perhaps those things had been sold off to help him climb out of that sinister-sounding “deep dark hole” that he had mentioned. Recalling what he had said about making and then losing a fortune at the gaming tables, her first thought was one of sympathy at the realization that the proud aristocrat was doing his best to keep up appearances—obviously of penultimate importance here in Town, as she had learned today when everyone had shunned her.
    But then alarm suddenly flashed through her. If he was having financial difficulty . . .
Oh, no.
Her glance flicked toward the dressing room. What if he found the Rose of Indra hidden in his dresser drawer? If he chose to take it from her, she doubted she could stop him. He was bigger than she, and stronger.
    She was already marching toward the dressing room, determined to get him out of there, or at least to distract him if he was still lingering over his toilette.
    You could choose to trust him, instead,
a small voice in her head offered. Perhaps it was conscience.
    Indeed, if she took that route, Alec, judging by his cultured furnishings, might even be able to determine how much the jewel was worth, whether its value was sufficient to buy back her home from Mikhail. But Becky couldn’t do it.
    Trusting people was usually a losing bet, she had learned in life. Better to rely on oneself alone. Then no one could let you down.
    She hurried on, determined to keep a good man honest, but just as she stepped into the bedroom, her suave host emerged.
    “I thought you’d be eating by now.” Ambling toward her, Alec was bare-chested, a towel draped carelessly across his shoulders. He had donned loose baggy trousers of natural linen—in the style called Cossack trousers, ironically enough. He was still tying the drawstring as he sauntered toward her, his bare feet silent over the parquet