Sweetest Little Sin by Christine Wells Page A

that information. The staff have been told to prepare twelve bedchambers.”
    “They’d better prepare for thirteen.”
    Nick’s head jerked up. “What?”
    Jardine returned his gaze coolly. “I’m going to get myself an invitation to this party.”
    “But if Radleigh has that list, he’ll know you’re one of us.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so,” murmured Jardine. “I’m not employed by the Home Office, or the government, come to that.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I’m what’s known as a private individual with useful connections, old boy. I’m not on any list, anywhere. Besides, the document is in code and Radleigh doesn’t have the skill to break it.”
    “Who has the key?”
    “That, I do not know.” Without the list, the key didn’t matter. But he must obtain that list.
    He turned his head to look at Nick. “While I’m at this sterling event, I’d like you to do something for me. There’s a house in Lincolnshire that I’d like you to watch.”

    SHE was sitting by the window, gazing out, when he walked into the villa he’d bought for her under an assumed name. She always sat there when he came. Jardine wondered if she ever moved from that spot, if she even noticed the pretty stand of willows with the stream running through it.
    He’d done his best for her. But it wasn’t enough.
    She must have heard him walk in, but she did not turn her head to look at him or greet him by name. He knew the reason. Even after all these years, he wasn’t forgiven.
    He’d done his duty by her. By God, he’d given her every comfort money could buy. Staff to see to her needs day and night. A generous allowance to spend however she chose. He’d freed her from her former life. He’d even tried to give her himself, though the attempt had cost him dearly. But she’d spurned his pious, grudging gesture, and rightly so.
    “Celeste.”
    “Yes, Marcus?” She didn’t turn her head.
    A flash of annoyance quickly fizzled to pity. She didn’t want him looking at her face. Vanity had not fled with the passage of time, nor with the ruin of her once-spectacular looks. “I have to go away. I came to see if you needed anything.”
    Her husky voice, as remote as her gaze, answered him. “No, Marcus. I don’t need anything.” She paused. “Why should I?”
    But she did need something. Many things. All of them beyond his power to give.
    And it seemed hard, so very hard, not to resent her.
    Because she was the living reminder of all he stood to lose.

    SURELY, it was a mean-spirited person who would not take joy in her own mother’s delirious happiness. Surely, if she were truly selfless, she wouldn’t feel the tiny, poisonous barb of envy pierce her skin every time Millicent extolled the virtues of her prospective husband. Nor would she have to force the words through tight lips when her approval of yet another item in her mother’s lavish, endless trousseau was paraded before her.
    But misery was a selfish beast, and Louisa couldn’t help feeling thin paper cuts of pain every time she remembered that she would never know the joys of a husband and children or a household of her own, even for the first time.
    Perhaps she couldn’t prove her marriage, but it had happened, all the same. She’d taken those vows and she’d meant every word. She could not cast them off as lightly as a winter cloak.
    The memory of Jardine’s mouth against hers, his hands on her body returned, an aching torment. It was the height of cruelty, the way he took advantage of her weakness, time and again, despite rejecting her in the most brutal terms. A crime that she could never resist him. She loved him, and that made it so hard to say no.
    She despised herself for giving in, but she could never seem to refuse him, even when she’d steeled herself time and again against his wiles.
    “You don’t think this is too much like mutton dressed up as lamb, darling?” Millicent’s light voice broke into her thoughts.
    Her mother