Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
she was lodging with her sister Joanna and Alex in their rented town house. It was warm, comfortable and quiet. There were servants to attend to her every need. The only thing that was lacking was her freedom. Merryn was not accustomed to accounting to her relatives for her every move. It was one of the reasons she had invented various friends with whom she pretended to stay when Joanna was out of town. Her sister had never questioned her. Joanna had no notion of the type of life she really led and her work for Tom Bradshaw. She trusted Merryn. And until recently, Merryn had never felt guilty over her deception. Now that Joanna was back in town, however, and Merryn was misleading her on a daily basis, her conscience was starting to trouble her.
She had reached number twelve. A footman bowed her inside the house. A small white terrier threw himself on her with excited abandon and she bent to give him a hug. Merryn’s sisters, Joanna and Tess, were in the sitting room reading, respectively The Ladies Magazine and The Ladies Monthly Museum or, more accurately, looking at the pictures. There was a library in the house but the only person who ever picked up a book other than Merryn herself was her brother-in-law, Alex. Merryn had sometimes wondered what it was that Alex saw in Joanna. Theirs had been an arranged marriage in the first instance but was now well and truly a love match. It seemed incomprehensible to Merryn that a man like Alex with broad scientific interests and a sharp incisive mind could possibly love her sister who had no interest in anything except shopping and was about as incisive as a sponge cake.
“Merryn darling!” Joanna cast aside her magazine and gave her sister a radiant smile. “Come over to the fire. You looked chilled to the bone! What have you been doing this afternoon?”
“I’ve been to the library,” Merryn said, without bothering to specify which or what for.
“Well, how lovely, darling,” Joanna said vaguely. “Would you care for some tea?”
Another cup was brought. Tess poured for her. Merryn let the heat of it warm her and the strong flavor revive her. Tess and Joanna were talking about winter fashions now. They were seated together on the sofa, heads bent. The firelight flickered over their glossy brown curls. Suddenly Merryn was transported back to the nursery parlor where two little girls were turned out as pretty as china dolls for visitors to admire. She could have made a third, perhaps, a pale imitation of their prettiness, except that she had already been up a tree, knees scraped, skirts torn, reading a book. Joanna and Tess, older, wrapped up in themselves and happy in each other’s company, had never paid her a vast amount of attention. Neither had Garrick, on those rare occasions when he had been down from London with Stephen and the two of them had brought laughter and vitality and a sort of masculine vigor to the household that had felt so very different from the humdrum everyday life Merryn was accustomed to. Merryn remembered seeing them coming in, spattered with mud from riding hard, Garrick’s auburn hair whipped by the wind, his face tanned brown. She remembered the impromptu boxing match he and Stephen had held in the paddock; Miss Brown, the governess, had clucked and shepherded all the girls away but not before they had all seen Garrick stripped to the waist, muscular and broad, much as he had been when Merryn had seen him that night in his bedroom … Merryn shifted in her chair, feeling a bolt of something fierce and wicked shoot through her. She bent her head over her teacup, aware that she was more than a little flushed.
Alex came in. He greeted Merryn warmly. She watched as he bent to kiss Joanna. For a second she saw a look in Alex’s eyes, dark and intense, that mirrored the heat that had been in Garrick’s when he had looked at her. Suddenly Merryn felt hot and breathless again as though the drawing room had been drained of air. Joanna had blushed, too, a pretty color that stung her cheeks and made her look very young. Alex was smiling at her. The atmosphere seemed to sizzle. Merryn felt supremely uncomfortable and quite out of her depth. For years she had viewed love as a literary phenomenon, something she read about on the page and analyzed with the same intellectual curiosity as she viewed philosophy or language. Yet now it was as though something had awoken inside her and could not be put back to sleep. She closed her eyes for a second and felt again the caress of Garrick’s fingers against her cheek, his touch firm and sure, his mouth on hers, hungry, possessive.
She gave a little squeak and jumped to her feet. Everyone looked at her in surprise.
“I think I will go and rest,” she said quickly. “I feel a little tired.”
“You look rather flushed,” Tess said. “Have you caught a chill?”
“No,” Merryn said. “I don’t believe so. I …” She stopped. I do not understand what is happening to me …
“There was a letter from Mr. Churchward this morning,” Joanna said, after a moment. “He asks us all to visit his chambers tomorrow morning as a matter of urgency.”
Merryn paused, one hand on the door. “Must I go? I had plans for tomorrow.”
A frown briefly marred Joanna’s serene features. “It is a matter that affects all of us, so Mr. Churchward said. Something to do with our father’s estate.”
“Jo, do look at this design for a spotted muslin gown,” Tess interrupted. “Do you think it too young for me?”
Joanna obligingly turned her attention to The Ladies Monthly Museum and Merryn was left with nothing more than a vague feeling of disquiet. It was Garrick Farne who possessed the Fenner estate now. Surely this could have nothing to do with him.
She went out into the hall. The nursemaid was bringing Shuna, Joanna and Alex’s eighteen-month-old daughter, down the stairs. The baby held out her rounded arms to Merryn and for a moment Merryn hugged her close, breathing in her niece’s baby smell and feeling something tight and warm clutch her heart. She watched the smiling nursemaid take Shuna into the drawing room then went slowly up the stairs. The servants were lighting the candles now and the house looked bright and light, full of color and the scent of fresh flowers, so unlike the cold mausoleum that was Farne House. She thought of Garrick alone in that place. It must be unconscionably lonely, all dark corridors and silent rooms, just as the burden of a Dukedom must be lonely, carrying the responsibility for so many people.
Again she felt a shiver of disquiet. Garrick Farne was a powerful man, a crack shot, Tom had said, a famed swordsman, a man who had walked alone in places she would have been afraid to tread with an armed guard. And now he was on her trail. She had a disquieting feeling that Garrick could be very dangerous to her indeed.
CHAPTER FIVE
“ARE YOU SURE, your grace,” Mr. Churchward said, “that you are doing the right thing?” His tone, measured as it was, implied that he felt that Garrick might possibly have taken leave of his senses and should be clapped up in Bedlam.
They were sitting in the offices of Churchward and Churchward, lawyers to the aristocratic and discerning, in High Holborn. In fact they were in the inner sanctum, Mr. Churchward’s own office, and the door was very firmly closed. Pale sunlight tripped through the window and danced across Mr. Churchward’s imposing walnut desk, illuminating the deed of gift lying there. Mr. Churchward tapped it, impatient, unhappy.
“I am certain I am doing the right thing, thank you, Mr. Churchward,” Garrick replied.
“It seems to me,” Churchward pursued, “that you are giving away—” he took a deep breath “—a vast sum of money—” he put heavy emphasis on each word “—to the detriment of the Farne Dukedom.”
“I am aware of that,” Garrick agreed.
“One hundred thousand pounds,” Mr. Churchward said miserably. “And a very fine property in Fenners.”
“I have explained my reasons,” Garrick said gently. It was anathema to him to own Fenners. The property should never have been his in the first place. He had known from the moment that he picked up the deeds that he would give it back, along with all the monies that had accrued to it over the past ten years.
“Your scruples do you credit, your grace,” Mr. Churchward said, polishing his spectacles with great agitation, “but I do wonder if you