Surrender to Sin Read online

  “Yes,” Abigail said, wringing her hands guiltily. “It is all my doing, but, you see, when I met him in London, I thought he was…Well, I thought him quite perfect, actually.”

  “But he isn’t?” Vera smiled gently. “Most men aren’t, you know.”

  “He was so kind and helpful. I thought I’d met a Knight of the Round Table, right there in Piccadilly. But I was mistaken. He led me to believe he was married, when in fact, he isn’t.”

  Vera blinked at her in confusion. “You mean he led you to believe he was not married when, in fact, he is. That is dreadful.”

  “No, no,” said Abigail. “He’s not married at all, but he made me think he was.”

  “Indefensible,” said Vera, hiding a smile.

  “Indeed. If I’d known he was a bachelor, I should never have trusted him! I should never have come here. Forgive me, but I must warn you, Mrs. Nashe. He’s already tried kissing me, and you’re quite five times as pretty as I am. You mustn’t let him get you alone.”

  Mrs. Nashe laughed softly. “He reminds me so much of Arthur. Sinfully handsome, but perhaps just a little…impulsive. I never loved him any less for that. Tell me, Miss Smith, do you think I might get away with hiding in my room the rest of the evening? I absolutely loathe playing cards with that old witch.”

  “Leave it to me,” Abigail assured her. “Are you certain I can’t do anything for you?”

  “Quite certain. But perhaps there is something I can do for you.” Vera looked rather pointedly at Abigail’s heavy walking shoes. “I’ve a pair of evening slippers I could lend you.”

  Abigail laughed. “You’re very kind, but I seem to have forgotten to pack any stockings. All I have are my woollies. No, please!” she said, as Mrs. Nashe went to the trunk that sat open on the bureau in her room. “I’ll be able to buy stockings in the village tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Nashe pressed the white silk stockings on her. “We’re bound to be snowed in, by the looks of it,” she said. “We can’t have you tramping through the house in those clunky boots like a bailiff! I wonder,” she said, as though experiencing a sudden thought. “We stopped at any number of inns today. Do you think someone could have gone through your belongings?”

  “And taken my stockings?” Abigail laughed aloud. “Heavens, no. There’s a much simpler explanation. My nurse Paggles is quite absent-minded, I’m afraid. When I was packing, I caught her several times taking things out and putting them away. When she saw the trunks out at home, she got it in her head that we’d only just arrived, and I couldn’t convince her we were actually going away.” She glanced down at the stockings Mrs. Nashe had given her. “Just my sort, too. From Daughtry’s in Jermyn Street?”

  “Where else?”

  “You’re so kind. I’ll tell the others that you’re lying down with a sick headache and you’re not to be disturbed.”

  “Good night, Miss Smith.”

  Abigail ran upstairs to put the borrowed stockings away, then checked on Paggles in the next room, using the door in the hall, not the secret panel in the wardrobe; Paggles would likely die of fright if someone suddenly jumped out of her wardrobe. She found the old woman snoring contentedly in the four-poster bed, with Mr. Wayborn’s corgi nestled at her feet. She built up the fire, pulled the blankets up to Paggles’s chin, then went back down to the dining room.

  Mrs. Spurgeon had moved as close as she could to Cary, who was seated at the head of the table, with Cato’s perch beside him. “Beaks and claws,” Cato greeted Abigail coyly.

  “So you have come back, Miss Smith,” Mrs. Spurgeon observed without pleasure.

  “Only because I’m hungry,” Abigail retorted, slipping into her seat.

  “And thirsty, too, no doubt.” Disentangling Mrs. Spurgeon from his arm, Cary poured Madeira into a crystal goblet. “Take this to Miss Smith,” he told the servant.

  As Abigail took her wine from the servant’s tray, Cato suddenly swooped from his perch and flew down the length of the table towards her. For a moment, Abigail could only stare in horror, then, hastily and ignominiously, she sought refuge under the table, overturning her chair in the process, and pouring half the Madeira down the front of her dress. The clatter of her falling chair was completely lost in the chaos that followed.

  Where Angel had been hiding she had no idea; she had thought the corgi was upstairs in Paggles’s room. Evidently he had slipped out before she had closed the door, then followed her silently downstairs. He appeared now, as if from thin air, and it was the macaw’s turn to be terrified as, instead of finding his favorite victim at the end of the table, he suddenly encountered a dog that had no fear of him.

  Cato had no words in his vocabulary to express his feelings on the occasion. He could only squawk, shriek, and scream as he narrowly escaped Angel’s jaws. Hastily he took flight, beating his wings in a disorderly retreat. As the corgi snarled at him, Cato crashed onto the massive iron chandelier hung above the table. Gobbets of candle wax fell onto the leg of “veal” as the chandelier tipped dangerously then righted itself beneath the bird. Angel barked, and Cato screamed back in undisciplined argument.

  Mrs. Spurgeon added her piercing voice to the confusion of animal noises. “Mr. Wayborn! What is that uncivilized beast doing in here?”

  Abigail heard Cary push back his chair. In the next moment, he was down on all fours, looking under the table at her. She looked back at him as defiantly as she could through the bottom of her glass as she finished the Madeira.

  “More wine, cousin?”

  “Mr. Wayborn, that wicked bird belongs in a cage!”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said, cursing under his breath as he bumped his head on the table. “Would you be so kind as to take the dog out? I’ll manage the bird. Or are you frightened of dogs as well?” As he spoke, he shoved the snarling corgi under the table.

  “No, indeed,” said Abigail, scooping Angel up with real affection. “Best dog ever!”

  Over their heads, they could hear Mrs. Spurgeon threatening to climb up on her chair to rescue her darling boy. Abigail crawled out from under the table while Cary emerged from the other side. Cato spied Abigail, but with Angel tucked under one arm, the tender morsel was unassailable. He shrieked in frustrated rage.

  “Good boy,” Abigail murmured lovingly to the corgi, stopping to pick up her plate. “Be so good as to serve me a little more veal,” she told an obliging servant.

  Outside, the moonlight on the snow was so beautiful that she scarcely felt the cold. The stillness reminded her of one of Mr. Coleridge’s early poems, “Frost at Midnight.” Content with her lot, she sat down on the bench in the shelter of the portico and shared her “veal” with Angel. “You are the best dog in the whole world,” she told him very sincerely as he licked the plate.

  Her guardian angel did not remain faithful to her for long. He soon caught sight of a rabbit in the distance and shot out of the portico like a cannonball, his short legs barely able to keep his head out of the snow. From the back end, he looked rather like a rabbit himself, Abigail thought, as the front door swung open.

  “Cato’s been captured,” Cary announced, pressing a handkerchief to his badly scratched hand. “We’ve reached a compromise. Cato will not be caged, but he will be confined to my study. He’ll be in no one’s way there, and Mrs. Spurgeon can use it for a sitting room, if she likes. If you would like to come back in, I think I can vouch for your safety.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t mind the cold. I’m quite happy where I am.”

  He looked out towards the woodlands beyond his lawn. Icicles hung in the branches, chased in silver by the moonlight. “The Frost performs its secret ministry, unhelped by any wind,” he murmured.

  “I didn’t think you liked Coleridge,” she said, surprised.

  He sat down on the bench across from her and leaned forward. He hadn’t come out to talk poetry with the girl. “Look here,” he said abruptly. “What would you do if the Spurgeon sent you away? Where would you go?”


  “What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled. “How could she send me away?”

  “She’s awfully fond of that bloody bird, and he certainly hates you, my dear. I think it very likely she’ll be sending you back to London as soon as the roads are cleared up.”

  “You seem to think Mrs. Spurgeon has some power over me.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Is she not your employer?”

  Abigail’s mouth fell open.

  “There’s no shame in finding employment as a companion. Mrs. Spurgeon is a waking nightmare, but she is respectable. Come, come, Miss Smith,” he said impatiently. “Now is not the time for false pride. We’re cousins, after all. I know you don’t have much money. I know your father is the rudest man in Dublin. Are you running away from him? Is that it?”

  “My father is not the rudest man in Dublin,” Abigail exclaimed, startled.

  “I expect the title is passed from man to man with great frequency.”

  “My father is the best man I know!” she said. “I am not a servant, sir. I am not in danger of—of losing my place. I don’t require any assistance from you. And I’m not Irish.”

  “You are—forgive me—socially awkward, sexually backward, and a glutton for whisky. But if you tell me you’re not Irish, naturally, I take your word for it,” he said, shrugging.

  “That is very good of you, I’m sure!” said Abigail, climbing to her feet.

  “Don’t go on my account,” he said pleasantly, “unless, of course, it’s time for Mrs. Spurgeon’s foot-bath.”

  “I told you, I’m not her servant,” said Abigail, growing red in the face.

  “Then stay,” he invited her. “I think we ought to be friends, don’t you? You’re not still sulking because I kissed you? I said I was sorry. Can’t you get over it?”

  Abigail bristled. “No, you didn’t. You never said you were sorry. You were stupid and rude. Just the sort of rude, stupid person who’d put French windows in a house like this!”

  “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you really ought to be thanking me.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I seem to have cured you of your stammer,” he pointed out.

  Abigail looked away angrily. He still had not apologized.

  “Tell you what, cousin. I’ll let you make it up to me tomorrow. There’s going to be ice skating down at the Tudor Rose. Go and fetch your second best pair of boots.”

  “And why would I do that?” she snapped.

  “I couldn’t ask you to spoil your best boots,” he patiently explained. “The blacksmith’s going to put skating blades on them. Go on. Hurry up. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “You actually expect me to go to a skating party with you?” she said incredulously.

  “Yes, of course. You couldn’t possibly go to the inn without an escort. Run and get your boots, there’s a good girl. I haven’t got all night.”

  “I am not going skating with you,” said Abigail. “I don’t even like skating. Or you!”

  “I’ll teach you to like both,” he said kindly. “It’ll be fun. And I promise not to kiss you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

  Angel suddenly bounded into the portico and dropped a dead rabbit at Abigail’s feet. “Augh!” she said. Angel looked up at her, puzzled by this strange reaction to his handsome gift.

  “I hope you like rabbit stew, cousin.”

  “You can always tell Mrs. Spurgeon it’s veal,” she said tartly.

  No doubt insulted by their lack of enthusiasm, the proud little corgi picked up his rabbit and dragged it away, leaving a bloody trail in the snow.

  Cary sighed. “Would you like to buy a dog, Miss Smith?”

  “Good night, Mr. Wayborn.”

  She was gone. Feeling underappreciated, Cary started for the gatehouse. He had scarcely progressed ten feet in the knee-deep snow when he heard a window opening behind him, followed by a piercing whistle that elicited a sympathetic howl from the corgi.

  Cary nearly laughed aloud as a pair of leather boots with their laces tied together came flying out of the open window, landing at his feet in the snow. Angel abandoned his grisly prize to investigate the new arrival. By the time Cary retrieved Abigail’s boots, the window had closed and there was no sign of Miss Smith.

  “She can’t resist me,” he explained to Angel, who had been thoroughly unhinged by the girl’s flying shoes and was rushing here and there in the snow, barking, in case other shoes got similar ideas. “No woman can.”

  Chapter 6

  Cary awoke the next morning in such a cheerful, springtime mood that the sight of snow outside his window startled him. The sagging bed had left him with a stiff neck, the fire had died of damp in the night, and the stone walls of the gatehouse were like blocks of rough-hewn ice, but nothing could shake his sense of well-being. He put it down to the excellent dream he’d had, in which Miss Smith had been made to admit, from the church pulpit, no less, that his kisses in no way reminded her of the nocturnal order of Chiroptera. She’d then apologized to him privately and in the most delightful manner. Her contrition was so touching that he generously had allowed her to make amends. She’d proved to be surprisingly good at making amends.

  One handsome concession deserves another, he decided. He went outside for a bowl of fresh snow. After melting it over his smoking fire, he resolutely took up his razor. Miss Smith had tossed her shoes out of the window to him, and the least he could do was shave off the beard she found so offensive. Then they could go skating, and this time, when he kissed her, there would be no talk of bats.

  In walking to the village, he discovered that the worst of the snow had been cleared from the road. This was good; he’d be able to drive Miss Smith to the Tudor Rose, giving his cousin the opportunity to admire his horses as well as his own skill in handling them. He whistled all the way to the blacksmith’s, then strolled to the Tudor Rose to order his breakfast while the smith modified Miss Smith’s boots with skating blades. The inn’s back garden, which went down to the banks of the frozen river, was already filling up with skaters. Cary took a seat at one of the planked tables outside and watched a group of children skate. Mr. Temple, the well-meaning young curate, seemed to be in a position of authority over the energetic youngsters. He greeted Cary with deference; when the Vicar of Tanglewood Green shuffled off the mortal coil, the living at the parsonage would be in Mr. Wayborn’s gift.

  When Cary had eaten, he collected Miss Smith’s skates at the smithy, hung them about his neck by their laces, and headed home. As he crossed the stone bridge that marked the edge of his property, he was surprised to see Miss Smith herself on the riverbank. She was sitting on a rock that had been hewn into a rough bench, a red horse blanket spread underneath her skirts, and she appeared to be drawing or painting on a lap desk. Though she had only apologized to him in a dream, he found he had quite forgiven her. He waved to her, but she pretended to ignore him, a useless subterfuge as she obviously was painting the bridge under his feet. As he crossed the bridge and trotted closer, his own short-legged dog bounded out of the snow and barked at him.

  Miss Smith could no longer ignore Mr. Wayborn’s approach. Indeed, the way she stared at his clean-shaven face was very gratifying to his male pride. He walked straight over to her, bent at the waist, and planted a firm kiss on her mouth before she knew what was what. He just couldn’t resist. Predictably, she blushed.

  “Good morning, Cousin!” He grinned at her, doffing his hat for good measure. “I see your guardian Angel has been with you all this time.”

  The kiss had happened so fast that Abigail couldn’t be sure it had actually happened at all. He would have to be a madman to simply walk over to her and kiss her, she decided. Then again, she would have to be mad to imagine such a thing. As she could scarcely ask him to clarify matters—“I beg your pardon, sir, but did you by any chance just kiss me?”—she decided her best course of action was to ignore the entire disgraceful episode, real or imagined.
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  “He…was waiting for me when I came out,” she stammered.

  “There’s something different about me,” he prompted her. “The old ornament of my cheek hath already stuff’d tennis balls, to paraphrase Shakespeare.”

  “What?” she said, unable to comprehend him.

  “I have shaved my beard.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said, resolutely returning her attention to her work. She was painting in watercolors and melted snow. The paintbox set on her lap was very new and clever. The lid was designed to convert into a miniature easel, and there were tiny china dishes for water and for mixing colors. She wore gloves with the fingertips snipped off, the better to grip her brushes.

  He looked over her shoulder at the picture she was painting. She tilted her head instinctively, as though afraid to leave her neck exposed to him. “Not going very well, is it?” he said compassionately. “Your bridge is in grave danger of falling down, cousin. Had I seen your picture beforehand, I should never have used said bridge to cross yon river.”

  Painting a winter-white landscape was certainly a challenge, but Abigail felt she had a good command of the problem she had set for herself. “But I’m not trying to paint the bridge, Mr. Wayborn,” she told him.

  “In that case, you have succeeded handsomely, and I withdraw all criticism.”

  Abigail tried to explain. “I’ve given myself a test. I’m trying to capture the light by painting only colors and shapes, not things. The bridge is of no interest to me.”

  “Well, it’s of interest to me,” he said. “It’s my bridge. As for colors, it’s all white today, even the sun and the sky. Perfect day for a skating party,” he hinted.

  “No, you’re wrong,” said Abigail. “There’s scarcely any white at all, when you look carefully. There are grays and blues, violets, and purples, and even yellows.”

  “Purple snow? My dear Miss Smith, have you been out here tippling whisky?”

  Abigail angrily put her brushes away and closed up her paintbox, not caring that her picture was still wet. Why was it she had such difficulty explaining even simple things to him? She hated explanations, anyway; she would much rather be left alone. “It’s time I went back to the house,” she announced. “I’ve not had my breakfast.”