Sweetest Little Sin Read Online Free Page A

direction.” He held the neat rectangle of cream stock between his gloved fingertips. Automatically, she took it.
    He moved to the window and paused as he opened the door and swept the curtain aside. “Don’t delay too long. There is much to arrange.”
    The brief blaze of the ballroom snuffed as the curtain swung back into place. Louisa blinked dazzled eyes and tried to calm her racing pulse. She ought to throw the card away. She dropped it into her reticule.
    She counted slowly to fifty before slipping back into the ballroom.

    LOUISA stared, dry-eyed, out the window of her bedchamber while all her hopes shattered around her like the breaking dawn.
    He hadn’t come.
    No word, not a letter nor a token, not even a halfpenny bunch of daisies sent with a grubby messenger boy. Nothing. On her birthday, the one day of the year she’d learned to depend on Jardine, he’d failed her.
    When last they’d met, she’d screamed at him, told him he was a murderer, that she never wanted to see him again.
    And he’d reminded her that nothing either of them could do or say would change one thing—they were destined to be together.
    For years, she’d believed that, carried the hope of him like a small, flickering candle in the shelter of her hand. She’d stayed up all night—in masquerade costume, no less—waiting for him. Despite what had passed between them those months ago, she’d been certain he would come. She hadn’t given up, not even after the last stroke of midnight marked the end of her birthday.
    Only the lightening sky of a new day finally convinced her. As dawn touched the square outside below, dancing off the windows of the houses opposite, her foolish hope fizzled and died.
    It wasn’t even that he hadn’t come—perhaps he’d good reason to stay away. But the pathetic creature she’d made of herself, sitting up all night waiting for him, longing for some sign he remembered her existence, proved it beyond doubt.
    She was nine-and-twenty and she needed to get on with her life.
    She wanted a husband, not this dream figure of a man who stormed in and out of her mundane, peaceful world, leaving a trail of destruction and yearning behind him. She wanted a home and children of her own.
    Yet, she’d hoped for all these things from Jardine. She’d set such store by his limited constancy. He’d never missed her birthday, not once in eight years.
    But this time . . . Why hadn’t he come? Cold fear swept over her like a blizzard. Her hand flew to her throat. What if he . . .
    If he were dead, she would know it. She would feel it. She would .
    Louisa shot across the room to the clothes press and rummaged until she found the blue domino and loo mask her maid had put away. She swirled the domino around her shoulders and tied the string, pulled the hood over her distinctive pale hair.
    With the mask dangling from her wrist, she eased out her bedchamber door and crept along the dark hall, past the half-moon table with its ornate ormolu clock. No squeaks or creaks betrayed her as she hurried down the stairs, the tread of her soft slippers on the carpet runner the barest whisper in the heavy silence.
    The skivvies would already be up, sweeping hearths and laying out fires. She needed to be quick. A bribe in hand, she approached the door, but she didn’t need to part with her money this time. The hall boy slept curled up in the deep armchair by the heavy front door.
    She let herself out, winced at the slight creak of the hinge. She whipped a glance at the hall boy, but he didn’t rouse save for a childish snuffle. Closing the door behind her, Louisa secured her mask, then hurried toward Russell Street.
    Her heart beat a frantic tattoo in her chest, and the wet soaked through her thin slippers to chill her feet. Her breath came in sobs. She must know if he was alive and well. She’d forgive him anything, everything, if only he still lived.
    Louisa blinked hard, barely seeing where she went through the blur in her eyes.