Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
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a physical attraction, perhaps, although she knew little about such things and understood even less. But no matter how little experience she had, she would still know she lied. What she felt for Garrick was no mere infatuation. It was deeper than that. She lost herself when she was talking to him; he challenged her, he intrigued her. For a little while at least he made her forget who he was and what he had done.
She felt unutterably confused. Garrick had shown himself ruthless that night, as dangerous as she had feared, threatening to blackmail her, exposing her weaknesses. But her greatest vulnerability was her susceptibility to him. At the library he had exploited her attraction to him. Tonight—she trembled at the thought—he could have ravished her, taken her there and then, tumbled her on the pristine narrow bed in her spinster room, and she would not have stopped him. He had been a rake. He knew exactly how to provoke a response from her body. She shook harder as she thought of his mouth on hers, his hand against her breast. He could have seduced her, ruined her. She wondered why he had let her go.
If it were not so foolish, she would have said it was because he had some shreds of honor left. Her instinct told her it was so but surely her instinct must be mistaken.
Merryn shook her head to dispel such disturbing thoughts and went over to the bookshelves, taking a book down, a copy of The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. It was a beautiful volume, bound in leather, the pages smooth beneath her fingers. She started to read, concentrating on the words, willing herself to forget Garrick. Books were her friends. They never failed her. They soothed, cheered, distracted and encouraged her. She had used them to help her through the worst moments of her life and to celebrate the best. But tonight they could not save her. The words danced before her eyes. She could not concentrate. Her mind was full of Garrick, of his voice, his touch. Her senses felt inflamed. She was bewitched.
After ten minutes she put the book aside, baffled and upset. The ball was still in full swing but she was tired. She wanted to go to bed. She hoped Garrick had gone or she really would be obliged to call a footman and have him forcibly ejected, no matter the scandal.
She hesitated outside her bedroom door, aware of the shivers of anxiety and anticipation running up and down her spine, but when she opened the door the room was empty. Her slippers lay just as she had kicked them off.
Something caught her eye—her journal, sitting not on top of the pile of books at her bedside but on the cushion of the chair Garrick had taken. She grabbed the book. A sheet of paper fell from it.
His writing was bold and strong, as she might have imagined.
“Love and war are the same thing and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as the other.”
Cervantes. She smiled a little, despite herself, as she recognized the quotation. She had been harboring notions of war and revenge for years. She knew nothing of love.
Then her eye fell on the second line of writing.
“Pray do not waste your time in writing poetry, Lady Merryn. It is very bad indeed.”
Garrick had read her poems. How dared he. She blushed with mortification. She had known they were bad. She did not need confirmation.
She thrust his note into the fire and watched it curl and burn.
It was as she was about to ring the bell to call her maid to help her undress that she saw the other book. It was not one of hers but was a new copy of Mansfield Park. There was a note in that one, too.
“Your other copy was damaged beyond repair, I fear, so please accept this replacement.”
She wanted no gifts from Garrick Farne. She wanted nothing from him. She rather thought that she had made that plain in the lawyer’s office that morning. Yet he had her now because she found that she could not throw a book away. It was impossible. Anything else she would have consigned it to the fire along with the note. The book she reluctantly placed on her shelf and she tried not to think too much of the man who had given it to her.
For the second night in a row she lay awake.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FLEET PRISON was not as Merryn had anticipated. Blessed with a lively imagination, she had thought that it would be infested with rats, the walls running with water, the inmates screaming in mad frenzy to be let out. It was none of those things. The floors were swept clean, the walls were dry and it was very quiet.
The unexpected trip to Mr. Churchward’s office the previous day had delayed Merryn’s plans but she was still determined to push ahead with them and seek out the doctor who had attended the duel between her brother and Garrick. He was the only witness she could find. She was sure he had been bought off and she was intent on uncovering what had really happened. Her encounter with Garrick the previous night had not dissuaded her. In some odd way it had made her even more determined to learn the truth. For now she was fighting against herself as well as Garrick, against her helpless attraction to a man whom she detested. She felt naive and stupid to have such a conflict of emotions, angry with Garrick, incensed with herself.
It was also pleasant, Merryn thought, to escape from the house in Tavistock Street as well, even if a visit to the Fleet might not be everyone’s idea of a trip out. Garrick Farne’s offer had caused deep divisions between her and her sisters. Merryn was barely speaking to Tess, who seemed incapable of understanding her rejection of Garrick’s gift as blood money and was already merrily planning all kinds of expenditure. Merryn thought of Tess’s greed, and tasted bitterness in her mouth.
That morning Joanna had agreed to take the money, too. Merryn found it easier to excuse Joanna because she knew she had her reasons; Joanna was deeply devoted to Fenners, not because she loved the house and the countryside, as Merryn did, but because it was their last link to their father and to Stephen. And Joanna and Alex were poor, unlike Tess, the rich widow. Alex had an estate in the Highlands of Scotland that ate money rather than generated it and he had his cousin Chessie, who was currently staying with relatives in Edinburgh, to provide with a dowry. So Merryn could understand why Joanna would accept Garrick Farne’s offer, even as her sore heart rebelled against her sister’s pragmatism.
Dr. Southern’s cell was off the third-floor gallery. He was sitting alone, reading, when Merryn arrived. The light was poor and he was squinting. He looked like a plant that had grown in the dark: spindly, gray-faced and weak. There was a bottle at his elbow with a clear liquid in it and a stench of alcohol in the cell that hit Merryn like a wall. When the jailer ushered her in—she had paid him six shillings for the privilege—Southern looked up and his pale eyes rested on her gently but without focus. There was nowhere to sit other than the pallet bed, so Merryn knelt beside his chair on the hard stone floor.
“Dr. Southern?” she said. “My name is Merryn Fenner.” She hesitated. She had been hoping that the doctor would know her name but there was no recognition in his face. So she had no choice—she had to plow on with what she had come for.
“You may remember my brother, Stephen,” she said. “Stephen Fenner?”
Even before he answered she knew it was hopeless and her heart swooped down to her feet. Southern’s gaze slid away from hers blankly. He reached for the bottle.
“Stephen?” he muttered.
“Stephen Fenner,” Merryn repeated. “You were the doctor present at the duel when he died.”
“Duel?” The doctor was fumbling with the bottle, tilting it to his lips. Some of the liquid ran down over his chin and splashed on his shirt. It smelled sweet but sharp at the same time, catching in Merryn’s throat.
“I remember no duel.”
“Twelve years ago,” Merryn said. “Stephen Fenner.” She felt desperate. There had been two seconds at the duel, if duel it had been. One was dead, the other thousands of miles away, beyond reach. This man had been the only other witness present. Other than Garrick Farne himself …
“Please try to remember,” she whispered.
“No