Too Sinful to Deny by Erica Ridley Page B

door.
    Timothy would never be that stupid, he repeated to himself the entire way to his brother’s house. His legs and lungs burned from running so fast, so far, but Evan couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down. Timothy would never be that stupid.
    Timothy’s front door was locked. Of course the door was locked. All doors were locked today.
    Evan kicked it in.
    Sunlight filtered around him, sending his dust-flecked shadow spidering into the marbled receiving room—which was full to bursting. Crammed floor to ceiling with giant crates of brandy and silk and . . . What the hell was this? Hand-painted tea sets?
    He staggered backward, collapsed against the splintered door frame, tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Cargo. Specifically, the ship’s stolen booty, which was always immediately dispatched to the captain’s secret accomplice to peddle along the coast. That cargo.
    Here. In Timothy’s receiving room.

    The next morning, Susan reached an important decision. If she were to succeed in her plan to win over the town’s inhabitants with her unimpeachable deportment—and of course she would, given she succeeded in (almost) everything she set her mind to—she needed to stay far, far away from Mr. Evan Bothwick. And his kisses.
    Especially his kisses.
    Susan dragged herself out of bed and padded over to the washbasin. The freezing water she splashed on her face did little to alleviate her sluggishness . . . or to dilute the dream still swirling in the back of her mind. Him. His scent. His touch.
    She bared her teeth at her dressing mirror before returning to the basin and scrubbing them again. She’d always had clean teeth and fresh breath. Her inability to leave the washbasin was in no way a new obsession. Truly.
    Besides, it’s not as if she’d done anything so vulgar as enjoy the reprobate’s kisses. She was a proper lady. He was a rude, arrogant commoner who lost track of dead persons. And was, likely as not, the cause for them being in that state to begin with.
    Susan rang for her lady’s maid, then sat down at the escritoire, chin in hand.
    Perhaps by now her parents had written, or at least decided to send money. Then all she would have to do was wait for the magistrate to reappear with his horse so she could make her escape back to London. Then life would be perfect.
    She frowned. Usually that dream carried with it visions of Town bliss, as she swirled through ballrooms in the latest fashions and with the most important friends, admired by all. Today all her stupid brain could conjure was a stark emptiness, as if she’d missed an opportunity to experience—
    The door slowly creaked open and Janey scampered inside.
    As before, she was nothing more than a tiny jumble of elbows and knees poking out from a life-size ball of hair, as though she’d been swallowed whole by a carnivorous bird’s nest on her way to Susan’s bedchamber.
    But also as before, her deft little fingers worked magic on the myriad ties and buttons that supported modern day-wear. Susan couldn’t help the traitorous thought that Janey was significantly more efficient than her lady’s maid back home, who knew all the latest gossip but hadn’t the least clue what to do with a column of buttons.
    Perhaps Janey was equally efficient in the art of gossiping.
    Susan cleared her throat. “Are you familiar with the dress shop in town?”
    The maid hopped around a bit like a startled grasshopper, but her stick-thin fingers never left Susan’s hair. “I am, mum. That’s Miss Devonshire what runs it, she does.”
    Information at last. “Would Miss Devonshire be the one who looks like a porcelain doll or the one that looks like”—Susan faltered for an alternate description and came up empty—“a nursery-tale witch?”
    “Doll-baby, she is,” Janey answered without hesitation. “Other one’s Miss Grey.”
    “Are those two quite friends with Lady Beaune?”
    Janey froze in place.
    Startled, Susan tried to catch the maid’s eye