The Deadliest Sin. Caroline Richards

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The Deadliest Sin

      The Deadliest Sin

      CAROLINE RICHARDS

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Epilogue

      Chapter 1

      “Oh, do come with me, Julia. Those dusty tomes can wait—it’s glorious outside!” Rowena’s voice was clear and true as the first birdsong of spring.

      Dear God, her sister.

      Julia Woolcott’s eyes flew open, widening in the darkness. She blinked. How long had she been asleep, outside the reach of her senses? The darkness was total and she wondered if her eyes were really open. Perhaps she was blind. The blackness was as final as a closed coffin lid.

      Thoughts were slow in coming. Counting her breaths, she ignored the burning sensation in her lower limbs. Panic closed her throat, but she knew screaming would do little good. No one would hear. She swallowed back the terror that was more powerful than the scalding pain enveloping her right leg.

      More than anything, she needed to know her sister and Meredith were safe, far away at Montfort in the Cheviot Hills. The high stone wall and thick hedges surrounding the sixteenth-century estate would protect them. Let them be safe, she prayed beneath her breath.

      The shores of madness had never seemed closer. But as always, the wall of silence appeared when she needed it most, shutting out the world, keeping her safe.

      She would not think of that. She would think of Rowena wrinkling her nose at the smells emanating from her older sister’s warren of rooms above the stables at Montfort. It was where Julia played with light and dark, with her daguerreotypes, capturing images with her camera obscura and then fixing them to copper plates with iodine.

      “They’re gorgeous, Jules, simply magic!” Julia heard Rowena’s unabashed enthusiasm and imagined her pulling at Julia’s elbow, tapping a riding crop impatiently on the edge of the scarred table where the exposed copper plates lay. Her younger sister could never be kept indoors; it would be as cruel as pinning a butterfly to a board. Closing her eyes in the darkness, Julia imagined the spirit of Rowena captured on one of the copper plates, hair flying in the wind, riding at reckless speed toward Montfort’s endless horizons, and drifted off in slumber.

      Awakening again she experienced another sinking recognition that she was no longer asleep but locked away in a layer of shadows, gradations of thick, muffling darkness. Julia attempted to shift her weight from beneath a leaden heaviness but nothing moved save the stiffness of crinolines and whalebone. Heading off panic, she sifted through the images colliding in her mind’s eye. The footman and the knife. The tall man, his face in the shadows, the one who had shut her in that suffocating place.

      Then she was calm. Her aunt’s still-beautiful countenance shimmering before her, a picture she had captured many times with her camera, that newfound miracle. Unlike her sister Rowena, brazen and bold, Aunt Meredith would always turn her pure profile away from the camera lens, as though its penetrating gaze would rob her of her secrets. And Meredith had so many secrets.

      The air was like a heavy linen sheet pressed against Julia’s face, yet a cold sweat plastered her chemise and dress to her body. It was peculiar, the ability to retreat into herself, away from the pain numbing her leg and away from the threat that lay outside that suffocating room.

      A few moments, an hour, or a day passed. She found herself seated, her limbs trembling from the effort. Guilt choked her, a tide of nausea threatening to sweep away the tattered edges of her self-regard. Why had she ignored Meredith’s warnings and accepted Wadsworth’s invitation to photograph his country estate? Flexing her stiff fingers, Julia felt for the ground beneath her. A film of dust gathered under her nails. If she could push herself higher, lean against a wall, allow the blood to flow…

      The pain in her leg was a strange solace, as were thoughts of Montfort—her refuge and the splendid seclusion where her life with her sister and her aunt had begun. She could remember nothing else, her early childhood was an empty canvas, bleached of memories. Lady Meredith Woolcott had offered a universe unto itself. Protected, guarded, secure—for a reason.

      Julia’s mouth was dry. She longed for water to wash away her remorse. New images crowded her thoughts, taking over the darkness in bright bursts of recognition. Meredith and Rowena waving to her from the green expanse of lawn at Montfort. The sun dancing on the tranquil pond in the east gardens. Meredith’s eyes, clouded with worry, that last afternoon in the library. Warnings that were meant to be heeded. Secrets that were meant to be kept. Wise counsel from her aunt that Julia had chosen, in her defiance, to ignore.

      She ran a shaking hand through the shambles of her hair, her bonnet long discarded somewhere in the dark. She pieced together her shattered thoughts. When had she arrived? Last evening or days ago? A picture began to form. Her carriage had clattered up to a house with a daunting silhouette, all crenellations and peaks. Chandeliers glittered coldly into the gathering dusk. The entryway had been brightly lit, the air infused with the perfume of decadence, sultry and heavy. That much she could remember before her mind clamped shut.

      The world tilted and she ground her nails into the stone beneath her palms for balance. She should be sobbing but her eyes were sandpaper dry. Voices echoed in the dark, or were they footsteps? She strained her ears and craned her neck, peering into the thick darkness. She sensed vibrations more than sounds. Footsteps, actual or imagined, would do her no good.

      She felt the floor around her, imagining rotted wood and broken stone. Logic told her there had to be an entranceway. Taking a deep breath, she twisted onto her left hip, arms flailing to find purchase to heave herself into a standing position. Not for the first time in her life, she cursed her heavy skirts, entangling her legs. If she could at least stand…She pushed herself up on her right elbow, wrestling aside her skirts with an impatient hand. The fabric tore, the sound muffled in the darkness. The white-hot pain no longer mattered, nor did the bile flooding her throat. Gathering her legs beneath her, she pushed herself up, swaying like a mad marionette without the security of strings.

      She held her breath. The silence was complete. Arms outstretched, her hands clutched at air. No wall. Nothing to lean on. Just one small step, one after the other, and she would encounter a wall, a door, something. She bit back a silent plea. Hadn’t Meredith taught them long ago about the uselessness of prayer?

      Suddenly, her palms were halted by the sensation of solid muscle. Instinctively, she stopped, convinced that she was losing her mind. She felt the barely perceptible rise and fall of a chest beneath her opened palms.

      Where there had been only black, there was a shower of stars in front of her eyes and a humming in her head. She saw him, without the benefit of light or the quick trace of her fingers, behind her unseeing eyes.

      She took a step back in the darkness away from the man who wanted her dead.

      Chapter